To Love At All
by SadieGrace
Summary: "To love at all is to be vulnerable..." A collection of mostly unrelated Densi one-shots. Chapter 42: Suddenly There. A tag to this week's "Seventh Child" Densi moments, because I couldn't resist either. "When the words slip out of his mouth at the end of the day, he almost looks around to see where they came from... he's pretty sure he just proposed."
1. A Sigh of Relief

_AN: At the beginning of the summer I started what expected would be a collection of Densi drabbles and one-shots that I would work on and post over the summer. That collection never materialized, but this fluffy little scene is one that I started and has stuck in my mind. If I ever get around to writing the others, they'll be posted here as well._

_This first one is set at the resolution of the Deep Trouble story line, presumably in what will be the end of Deep Trouble Part 2. _

_I don't own anything NCIS:LA related. _

* * *

_"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one." CS Lewis_

* * *

Talia leaves the boatshed at the end of the day tired, but not unsatisfied. She genuinely likes this team, despite their aversion to sharing. They're good agents, good people and, in addition their incredible efficiency, they almost seem more like a family than a workplace unit. She's been on her own too long to really remember what that feels like, but her gut tells her that she's in the midst of something good.

There's a slight smile on her face as she walks out the doors. She wouldn't have been averse to getting to know a certain shaggy detective better, but the moment she heard the way he talked about his partner when they first met she should have known that he was off the market. She likes to think that maybe if she'd met him before Kensi Blye was in the picture she would have had a good shot at him. But then, something tells her that before Kensi Blye was in the picture she might have met an entirely different Marty Deeks.

A murmur of voices greets her as she opens the door, and as she rounds the corner to where her car is parked they become clearer. There, between her and her car, one scowling brunette has her hand on the door handle of her SUV. The owner of a blonde mop is leaning against the door, deliberately preventing her from opening it.

"How can I make it up to you, Kens?" He's asking, purposefully blocking her entrance to her car.

"Pizza? Thai food? Donuts? Rocky Road? The last of my stash of original Twinkies that you think I don't know that you know is in my bedroom closet?"

Her scowl deepens:

"Why do you always think you can buy my forgiveness with food?"

He leans closer: "Because I know you so very, very well."

As he speaks, he maneuvers closer and closer until her body is trapped between his and the car, one of his forearms on either side of her head, their bodies not quite touching until she breathes too deeply.

She raises her eyebrows skeptically but doesn't shy away from him.

His face grows serious as he looks at her.

"I was an idiot, Kens," he admits quietly.

"I've been an idiot these last few weeks thinking we could go back to before. Thinking it would be better if we just went back." A hand comes up to rest on her cheek and keeps her maintaining eye contact:

"I don't want to go back."

Kensi doesn't respond as he inches closer, and when his lips touch hers it's so reverent that it's like prayer and a plea and a sigh of relief all in one.

The moment is so intimate that Talia has to look away, and only then realizes that she has actually stopped moving and is just standing there watching them. As she resumes walking, she can still see them in her peripheral vision as they separate and speak again in low voices, oblivious to her presence.

"Am I forgiven?"

"You can't just kiss me and expect everything to be okay, Deeks."

His voice turns enticing as he plays his ace in the hole: "I'll buy you that deep fried, cream filled, chocolate covered heart-attack-waiting-to-happen that you like so much..."

She swats his chest with one hand and pushes him away. The last thing Talia hears as she closes her car door is Kensi's voice:

"And the Twinkies. And you better not have eaten any of them."


	2. Counting Up

_AN: I started this piece shortly after Kensi left for Afghanistan last season- I'm not thrilled with the end result, but wanted to finish it anyway, so here it is. This was my perspective on how her absence and return could have gone. Clearly, it's not canon after "The Frozen Lake." _

_I own nothing... obviously, since it didn't happen this way. _

* * *

It's been 68 days and 14 hours since he's seen her. Ten weekends. Two months, seven days. Three holidays –Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years. Half a season of Top Model.

He likes to quantify it like that, likes to know concretely the days and the measures of the time. Because he can't count down the days until she gets home, for some reason it feels like counting up the days since she left is almost as good, because today he has made it through 68 ½ days of whatever that total number is going to be, so there must be 68 ½ less looming ahead of him.

He missed her most at Christmas. Christmas has become _theirs,_ in a way. When she's not off on secret vendettas over the holiday, they spend it together and then ignore the significance of that. She's got her mom now, but he had hoped that he'd still get her for part of the day. He'd hoped maybe this year they wouldn't need to ignore what it meant. He decides those were valid hopes when Julia calls him on Christmas.

"I just wanted to tell you Merry Christmas, Marty," she tells him. "Kensi said she was going to bring you with her for Thanksgiving; I was hoping that we'd have her back by Christmas and you'd both be able to be here."

He can't remember the last time he spent Christmas with anything resembling a real family. He's been pretty sure Julia was rooting for them as a couple for a while, but that definitely confirms it.

"They told me she's ok—nothing more than that, but she's ok."

He gets the same message—a scripted call from Director Vance's office that doesn't tell him much more than that she's alive and must have stomped on some toes pretty hard to be allowed to send even that much of a message home.

He bought an "Our First Christmas Together" ornament and put a picture from the Justin-and-Melissa weeks in it. It's shiny and silver and sparkly and she would have made fun of him for it. He spends Christmas day staring at it and deciding that it's kind of a ridiculous ornament, actually. It wouldn't actually have been the first Christmas they spent together, and they're not actually _together _for their first Christmas together. He keeps it anyway.

Sam's family invited him for Christmas dinner, but he turned down the invitation, despite threats of Michelle's wrath. Sam's house can be noisy, and if Kensi tried to call he didn't want to be in a place where the noise could drown out the phone ringing. After the call from Vance, he almost regrets not going. After that cryptic message he can't convince himself that there's any hope that she'll still have the chance to call.

She's supposed to be here.

He tells Santa that he's spent enough crappy Christmases alone, and that if she could just come home this year for Christmas that would make up for all those rotten ones. He actually hopes that maybe karma will work in his favor and she'll come walking through his door on Christmas morning and set everything back in balance, but in the end he just adds it to his list of lonely holidays.

* * *

On New Years' he thinks of the old proverb that says that whoever you're with at midnight is the person that you'll be with for the rest of the year. He decides that night that he's not really actually superstitious. Nothing against Monty, but he's still hoping for someone else.

He still hasn't quite forgiven Hetty, and she knows it. He's careful, though, about showing it too clearly; he's aware that their future as partners probably rests on their ability to prove that they can remain professional and do their jobs regardless of their personal feelings, so he does his best to hide his feelings and continue on as if he still had absolute faith in their diminutive leader.

Hetty breaks out another expensive bottle of alcohol for his birthday in January, but he leaves while half of his glass is still sitting on the table. He can't help but feel like she has intentionally taken away the only thing that he actually wants for his birthday, and hundred dollar scotch is a poor substitute.

Nell calls him in the evening. He mutes the TV before he answers because it seems more pathetic to be watching Titanic alone on his birthday if there is a chance that someone other than Monty will know about it.

"I know we haven't heard from Kensi, but I know if she could, she would tell me to wish you a happy birthday for her."

He grins a little bit at that—next to him, Nell knows Kensi better than anyone else.

"Bet she wouldn't have forgotten this year." He chuckles into the phone.

"No, she wouldn't. She _miiight _have already had plans," she suggests mischievously.

"Eric and I are still monitoring everything we see for anything that looks like it might be related to her, but we don't really have much to go on. So far nothing."

Eric had offered, in a roundabout, hypothetical way, before Christmas to try to hack into the DOJ's classified files to find out anything he could about Kensi and her mission. Deeks had turned him down. He isn't willing to risk his friend's career for his need to know—yet— but it sounds more and more tempting every day.

* * *

By the time Valentine's Day is approaching, he's trying to convince himself that he shouldn't even bother to hope that she'll be home for what should have been their first Valentine's Day together. He refrains from buying the "Our First Valentine's" picture frame that's for sale in the same aisle of the drug store where he bought the Christmas ornament. They're over the two month mark since she left, and he still hasn't heard any word that her return is getting any closer. He's settled on "no news is good news" because he knows that, even on a classified mission, they'd hear fairly quickly if there was a body being sent home from wherever-in-the-world she is. He convinces himself that the package of Valentine's chocolates his picks up is really for him, and not because he wants to have something for her on the off-chance that she does show up for Valentine's.

It's nine days before Valentine's Day – not that he's counting—and he's sitting in the armory cleaning his gun when the door opens. For a moment he thinks he's hallucinating, but he thinks if he was really hallucinating she probably wouldn't look so tired.

She stops just in front of him, and for a long moment they just stand there, blinking at each other. Finally Deeks breaks the silence.

"Thapa told me how to cross a frozen lake."

The weariness disappears as a smile splits her face. And then her face is buried in his neck and she's finally _finally_ in his arms and he's quite possibly never going to let go again.

* * *

She appears on Valentine's Day with beer from the drug store on the corner. He's got dinner and candles and roses and chocolate and she has no idea what she's walking into when he opens the door. He really hadn't meant to do quite this much. She made him promise no reservations at fancy restaurants, and he intends to keep the promises he makes to her, but she's been gone for months and it's the first Valentine's Day that he has ever felt like _meant_ something and he can't bear to let it pass without fanfare.

He's cleaned the apartment from top to bottom and transformed his dining room table into an elegant restaurant setting. When she comes through the door and discovers what he's done, she just raises her eyebrows at him. Pulling the beer from the bag, she stores it in the fridge and wordlessly places on more item on an empty corner of the table.

He can't help but grin as her eyes dare him to comment on her purchase. He just hands her the single rose that he'd saved out of the vase on the table. He's fascinated by the hint of a blush that appears on her cheeks as she bends to smell it. With one arm he draws her toward him and presses his lips to her forehead. With the other, he holds his phone away from them to snap a photo.

She'll never admit it, but she's just as much of a romantic as he is. The shiny red picture frame that he refrained from buying just days earlier is sitting there glittering at him, testifying to that fact. Its silver and rhinestone letters scroll across the bottom:

"Our First Valentines"

_Our first_, he thinks, and smiles. It's time to start counting up again, only instead of anxiously waiting until he can stop counting, this time he's planning to count to infinity.


	3. Enough

_A/N: This scene would take place within the first chapter of my other story _In Due Time, _in the interim year after Deeks gives back Kensi's dad's knife in Three Hearts and before… well, before the rest of what happens in that story._ _It didn't make it in there, but I still liked it. _ _It's not necessary to read that one to understand this, but it will make a lot more sense. If you haven't read it, this would take place in the months after Deeks puts an end to their "thing" by returning Kensi's dad's knife, as Deeks attempts to distance himself from Kensi and Kensi waits for him to come back to her._

* * *

It's been three months. Three shatteringly grueling months. Three months in which he shows up each day at work braced to pretend that he hasn't just given up the only thing he really wants in life. He goes through the motions of the days, the cases, the movies nights, the celebratory dinners, and gradually the carefully controlled emotions give way to numbness. It's easier once the numbness arrives, it lets him convince himself that it's possible for everything to go back to the way it was _before_. Before Kensi. Before tacos. Before Afghanistan. Before Angelo.

The numbness turns into an inferno of conflicting emotions when Hetty calls them into her office one day to tell them they're going under. Together. As a couple. As a newly _married_ couple. As a _pregnant _newly married couple.

It sounds like heaven and it sounds like hell.

He sits by her on the couch on movie nights and drinks beer with her and watches stupid television, but he doesn't touch her anymore. And while he craves the freedom to touch her again, it's he himself who has carefully set those boundaries, because touching her even in the most innocent of ways is too much when he won't let himself hold her the way he wants to. But a new husband will touch his wife every chance he gets. It's not going to be a problem to remember to touch her; the problem is going to be remembering that it all has to end again.

* * *

A few days in, they're sitting there in their cozy living room after dinner, across from the next-door neighbors who want to hear all about their wedding and his proposal and how "Kylie" told "Bryan" she was pregnant. Katie and Matt are half a decade older than they are, friendly and normal and still sweetly in love after a twelve years of marriage. Deeks made it through a proposal story without giving anything away, but now Kensi is telling a cutesy little story of how Kylie announced her pregnancy and all his energy is going into controlling his face and his body language.

It's a special level of purgatory listening to Kensi narrate one of his deepest, most secret desires. She's clearly uncomfortable at first; it's probably only noticeable to him, but she paused a beat waiting for him to make up the story before realizing that at this moment he is incapable. Because, just a few minutes ago, making up a story of how he chased her down and convinced her to marry him had felt like a playful way to dream out loud without giving away the fact that he still _wanted_ all that more than he had wanted anything in his life.

Sometimes what he _wants_ and what he knows is _best_ are two completely different things.

It hadn't taken long before the universe had punched him in the kidneys with the reminder that he _couldn't have it_. After that, the story had taken a u-turn away from happy and playful until his own words felt like just a mockery of his own heart.

He can't deny that telling the neighbors their fake "good news" had given him frissons of very real pride and excitement. Even now, listening to Kensi make up stories about how Kylie had told Bryan that she was pregnant, a part of him wonders if that is how _she_ might tell _him_ that they were going to have a baby. _A baby_. The rest of him cruelly quashes the delighted spark of wonder that came with the thought. She isn't ever going to tell him she's having his baby. She isn't ever going to be _his_ at all. Marty Deeks doesn't get things like that. Happy, forever, _good_ things.

He's been her partner for four years. She's been his best friend for more than three. He's got a family at NCIS that finally feels like home. All that is more than he ever thought he'd have, more than he's ever had before. All that is good. His life is good. Problem is, all that makes it suddenly seem like maybe it's okay to want _more. _It's safer not to want anything, not to dream of anything, because if there's one thing his life has taught him, it's that dreams are just a vehicle for disappointment.

Except, maybe, the dream of keeping Kensi as his partner. That one, these days, he can almost believe is attainable. He thinks maybe, just maybe, if he can bury these dangerous, terrible, wonderful feelings for her and keep the darkness under control, she might stick around. He thinks they might make it to five years like Callen and Sam, and if heaven is being particularly kind, maybe they could make ten.

Except, somewhere in those ten years he's dreaming of, she's going to meet someone else and she's going to move on. Someone without all this darkness inside him is going to grow the cojones to tear her walls down and stick around to make her believe in him and fall in love with him. And she's going to marry him, and one day she'll tell them that she's going to have _his _baby. And, heaven help him, even if he makes it through the wedding, _that _is going to kill him.

But, he thinks, if he can have just that _one _smaller dream, just keep her around, then maybe he can survive the rest. Because he already knows he doesn't get the big dreams. Even the ones that are just normal expectations for other people are out of reach for Marty Deeks. But, if he can keep his expectations low, down to just _this one_ _little thing_, then maybe he can have it? If he can banish the thoughts of gold rings and holidays and warm beds and little ones with blue eyes and brown curls, then maybe he can just keep what he has? That's what it feels like, like keeping what he has is always contingent on not wanting too much, not reaching for anything more.

Then she kisses him, quick and sweet and natural. And it's all he can do to keep his face soft for Katie and Matt and his butt in his seat, because everything in him needs to run for the door, to get out of there and just _breathe_. Because she means too much with that kiss, and this is not a cover he can just drop and leave behind when they leave this house. She can never know that this is still _everything_ he wants. The knowledge that these kisses here in this house, on this op, are the only ones he's ever going to get is suddenly overwhelming. It was okay, those first days, before he let himself remember who he was, what he's done. Before he remembered that this was a limited time offer; Kensi's love and kisses and coming home to her are going to expire shortly. Even if it was "Kylie" and it didn't mean anyhting, he let it feel like it meant something. But it doesn't, and now it just feels like they're making a mockery of his own heart, and it _aches_, deep down to his bones.

He's listening to her story, enough to make at least the appropriate additions to the narrative, a reminder that _Bryan_ does get "all he ever wanted." He gets his girl and his baby and the happily-ever-after.

He's never going to be Bryan.

He tells himself that kissing her hair, breathing her in, is just his part of the cover, but he knows deep down that he's lying to himself. Really, it's goodbye. It's one last desperate hit of his addiction before he goes cold turkey. He'll still have to hold her, probably kiss her again to complete this op. They'll still share a bed and a house. But this, this is one last moment that he lets the hope live, just for a second, before he squashes it completely, smashes the light out and flings the remains into neverland.

Because the longer the hope lives, the brighter it gets, the more it hurts when it's gone.

It's better to kill it now.

He knows his body will betray him and wrap itself around her while he sleeps. He knows he'll kiss her to sell their cover to the neighbors. He knows he'll speak to her in endearments like a young husband would.

He knows it's going to _hurt_ like nothing else ever has.

But, surely that will pass. They can go back to OSP, back to Kensi and Deeks, back to working without the constant reminders of all that he wants and can't have. He _can_ have his partner and his best friend, just so long as he can make it through this and stop wanting anything else. He keeps that mantra running through his mind for the rest of the evening. _Keep your partner. You can have that. That's enough. Just keep your partner._

It's not enough, and he has to get out of there as soon as the door is closed behind Katie and Matt. He needs to get somewhere where he can't _smell _her and he needs to _do _something.

Really, he needs to surf, needs to be in control and let the waves try to wash away what feels suspiciously like _grief_. But that's not an option now, so he goes for the dishes instead, turns the water as hot as it will go, puts enough green apple scented dish soap in for four times the dishes that are there, and tries to channel the tension coursing through him into vigorously scrubbing the pots.

He knows she knows something is up. She can read him like he does her. He knows she cares, knows she's just waiting for him to open up and tell her what he wants. He just needs a few minutes to breathe, to force himself to switch modes, to steel himself to stay strong and to finish this business. He just needs a few minutes to come up with a believable answer before she makes him tell her what's wrong.

So, he scrubs and tells himself over and over again: _Just keep your partner. That's enough. That's enough. Just keep your partner._

_Just keep Kensi._

_That's enough._


	4. Get You, Take Two

_AN: The almost-twin to this story is already posted on my profile as a one-shot. If you've read that one, you won't find this one substantially different. That one was written from an early draft that I had saved online before my computer crashed. This one comes from the more advanced draft that was on my recently resurrected computer. While they're the same in essence, there were enough small differences that I ended up liking this one quite a bit better. Since the countdown to the finale is now in its final week, it seemed like a good time to add it to this little collection. _

_This is set speculatively at the end of Deep Trouble Part 2. The story is based on the premise that Sam and Callen are safe, Hetty is in Washington DC, Talia has returned to the DEA, and Kensi and Deeks have not yet discussed anything further about their relationship or the events of Three Hearts through Deep Trouble Part 1._

* * *

Usually, when a case is closed and the day is over, Kensi's world settles back into a sense of relative stability. Once the ripples of chaos disperse, she goes back to her routine of normal life—or as normal as life gets for Kensi Blye.

Nothing has been normal for a while now.

Since her deployment to Afghanistan, her whole world has been shifting unsteadily on its axis. Her deployment, Jack's reappearance, her captivity, her return, the unsettle nature of her relationship with Deeks, Sam and Callen's perilous day—they're all swirling around her and conspiring to knock her out of balance. Now, in the space of one day, it feels like the rug has been pulled out from under her already unstable feet.

Kensi has always done her best to keep herself from counting on things. Life has taught her that people cannot be trusted, that all conditions, including happiness, are temporary.

Despite her best efforts, there are two things she has come to count on.

One: Hetty knows all and can manipulate all.

Two: Deeks is always going to be there, to be hers. He's always going to be willing to wait.

In the space of one very rough day, all of that is suddenly shaken.

Even before Sam and Callen disappeared under the deep blue sea, Hetty's brusque rebuff, her subsequent mysterious departure, and Granger's ominous words already had her agitated. She hates the way that she's thrown off her game more easily these days. Since Afghanistan things seem to hit her harder. Still, for the most part she's been able to hide her instability and throw herself back into her job.

And then a beautiful brunette DEA agent showed up, smiling proprietarily at her partner.

At the end of the day, she is left shaken. None of the things that she was certain of seem so certain anymore, and she's desperate to get her feet back on solid ground, to know what is real and dependable in her shifting world.

She's not used to being uncertain. She's built her life around being strong, being unshakeable, until suddenly she's not anymore.

Death and danger are standard in their lives, but it still shakes her to see Callen and Sam, her invincible mentors, come so close to not coming home. It's been long enough since either of them have had a really close call that she had found herself lulled into a false sense of security on their behalf.

By the end of the day, many things have settled back into their places. Sam and Callen are safe and sound, cherishing the fresh air. Key members of the cartel are behind bars. Talia has gone back to whatever hole she crawled out of, for now at least.

But Hetty's still gone, and there's still a strange feeling of uncertainty when she looks at Deeks.

* * *

It's only the fact that he had awkwardly backpedaled every time Talia said anything a little too suggestive that gives her the courage to show up at his door that night, seeking answers.

When he opens the door, he's in sweats and Monty's face peeks through from behind his left knee. He looks comfortable and rumpled and huggable, and _just when on earth did Kensi Blye start thinking of people as huggable? _ Suddenly, all she wants is to be curled in the circle of those arms on the couch. She's pretty sure they'd help stead the shifting of the ground beneath her—except at the moment he's still the source of some of the quaking.

When she stares at him blankly for a minute, he runs a nervous hand through his hair and reaches out.

"Kens? Do you want to come in?"

She doesn't know where to start, so the words that tumble out of her mouth are plucked from the middle of her thoughts and, to him, they seem to come out of nowhere.

"She doesn't get you. She can have anything else she wants, as long as she doesn't get you."

For a moment he is genuinely confused. There is an ocean of vulnerability in her eyes, and it's disconcerting for him to see his badass partner so off-balance.

"Who doesn't get me? Talia?"

"Of course, Talia. Was there someone else today that was one step away from wrapping herself around you and using you for a stripper pole?"

He chuckles quietly and raises one eyebrow at that mental image, and then tilts his head and smiles softly down at her. He likes this jealous, possessive side of her, but he doesn't like seeing her so unsettled, so he speaks carefully.

"Do you know what she said to me while you were in the bathroom?"

She scoffs, and he sees a bit of his Kensi in amidst the uncertainty again.

"Do I want to know?"

"She told me I was 'clearly madly in love with my partner.' Call me crazy, but I don't think any woman really wants a man who she can see is clearly madly in love with someone else."

His blue eyes have gone soft as he tilts his head and leans in to look in her eyes, waiting for her reaction.

She takes a moment to absorb this, to process the fact that this woman who had thrown her so out of kilter had herself noted the one thing that could keep Kensi in balance.

The world begins to settle.

"So I get you?"

Can it really be that simple?

"Do you _want_ me? Cuz we haven't really talked about any of this Kens. We started to and then you were shipped off to Afghanistan and we couldn't really talk, and then there was Jack back again and the capture and I was trying not to push. And then there was Angelo and I couldn't put you in more danger because of me. I haven't been sure where we stood for months, Kens. I didn't' event know what _I _wanted for a while; I have no idea what you want anymore."

She sees fear in his eyes and suddenly understands where it comes from. They are different by nature. The same situations cause them to react in opposite ways. Once the realization strikes her, she feels stupid for not having seen it sooner. They are opposite in so many ways, how had she missed this one?

When something strikes a little too close to something she loves, she draws it closer, her instinct is to fight for it and protect it and bind it even more solidly to herself. It's when things are threatened that she finds herself most willing to invest in them.

His nature is different; whether it's a legacy of his father or just his deeply self-deprecating nature, he does the opposite. He assumes that he is the reason for the danger, and he separates himself from what he loves in order to protect it.

It happened with Angelo, with Sidarov, with countless other situations.

The moments that make her pull closer are the same ones that make him push away. She's done with that. She's done with allowing enough space between them for the pull and push to cause a divide. She's holding on. He can push all he wants, but she'll be holding him to close for him to get any leverage.

"Yes. I want you. Do I get you?"

It starts out strong and confident, but the end turns soft and hesitant and she almost doesn't recognize the voice as her own.

The heavy breath that comes from his lungs is followed by a gentle hand coming up to cup her cheek and force her eyes to meet his.

"You've always _had_ me."

A smile splits her face and she suddenly feels almost shy.

"And you've always had me; it just took a while for me to admit it."

And then she's secured in the circle of those arms, and the earth begins to settle back into place.

Maybe Hetty will be back, maybe she won't. Afghanistan and Jack will need to be dealt with. Things will continue to shift and shudder for a while as they settle back into place, but she can already feel the foundation under her feet again. His chest is solid and warm under her cheek and his arms are steady and firm around her, and that's enough to set her world back on its axis.

* * *

_AN2: I often struggle with writing Kensi's POV, but when I watched Deep Trouble for the second time, she struck me as being very clearly unsettled by all the things that were going on, and not just with Deeks. I think it's safe to say that she's still dealing with the Afghanistan arc more than we've see on the show, and that's contributing to her vulnerability in general. I'd love to hear your perspective on how you saw her in that episode as well as what you thought of her in this story. _


	5. Crumble

_AN: I've been following __**Hermies818**__'s "The Glory of Love" collection for the past couple of months, and chapter 16 "Lose a Little" stuck with me and refused to get out of my head. She's graciously agreed to let me post my version of a follow-up to that piece. The ideas and inspiration of this piece are hers, and you should definitely check out "The Glory of Love" for yourself. _

_This one-shot follows immediately after the end of chapter 16 "Lose a Little/Kensi and Deeks Fight." If you haven't read that one, I suggest you do so before reading this._

* * *

"_What needs to happen so we can just move past this?" _

_From their opposing sides of the bed, Kensi and Deeks just stared at each other, no movement, no words, for what felt like years. The bed in between them might just as well have been the Pacific Ocean. The unspoken answer to her question hung heavy in the air, like some invisible beast that would destroy them at the first sign of movement. In every war, no matter how large or how small, there were always casualties. Always. (from "The Glory of Love," Chapter 16, by Hermies818)_

* * *

"I don't think I can, Kensi." His voice has gone quiet, and he almost has to force the gravelly reply out of his mouth. The use of her full name shakes her almost as much as the words he speaks.

"You don't think you can _what_?" She knows what he means, but she refuses to believe it.

"You said _no_, Kens—" _there, _there's her nickname, and it makes her breathe a little easier for a second—until the next words come. "I don't think I can just get past that. I wanted to marry you and you said no. And you seem to be able to just forget that and move on, but I can't."

The chasm that is the bed between them only seems to be getting wider as he speaks.

"I've tried, Kensi. You know I've tried to just move past it and let it go." His broken voice is terrifying her, but she can't find the breath to stop him.

"I love you. I love you so much." They are familiar words, but his tone is foreign to her. They're usually spoken warmly, occasionally frantically, sometimes softly. Today, the only emotions she identifies in them are pain and resignation, and it chills her. "And I thought it could be enough even if you didn't love me as much as I loved you. I thought as long as you were mine, it would be enough.

"But every time something like this happens, my brain reminds me that you're _not_ really mine. It tells me that of course I'm not enough to keep someone like you forever. And I know you don't believe in it, but part of me thinks that if _I_ was enough, I could make you believe in it, for _me_. It tells me that even if you think you love me now, subconsciously the reason you can't decide to marry me is because you know that sooner or later someone better is going to come along.

"I want to put a ring on your finger and promise you forever and know that I'm going to wake up next to you for the rest of our lives, and I can't just stop wanting that."

"If you loved me, you would just let it go." She wants to eat her words the moment they escape from her mouth. She's sworn she'd never be one of those women who manipulated her man with _if you loved me_ statements.

"Or maybe, if you loved _me_, you would understand why I can't."

She's aching to touch him, to ease the tension she sees frozen in his muscles as he stiffly turns to go. All the remaining anger morphs into fear as she waits for the slamming of the door, but somehow the soft click of it gently closing is far worse.

She waits for hours for him to return, but he doesn't.

* * *

The ring is in his nightstand drawer. She knows that because she had watched him put it there that fateful night after she told him no, when she was doing her best to pretend she didn't see how shaken he was. And she's watched him avoid that drawer ever since.

She's never opened it, but tonight she does. She pulls the little blue box out of its hiding place and stares at the diamond ring it holds.

She's worn one before, albeit a very different one. She's spent the years ever since then convincing herself that that part of the dream was dead, that she didn't believe in weddings and marriage. But he wants the promise written down, recorded on paper. He needs the weight of the ring on his finger and the sight of the diamond on hers as tangible reminders when the doubt eats at him.

For years, she's believed that if she never made that promise again then the future that came with it could never be ripped away again. It didn't matter though, in the end, because she's been planning for a lifetime with him just the same, vows or no vows, and that future is falling away anyway.

The thing is, she has the power to assuage his fears and crush her own at the same time. She just hasn't been brave enough to do it. She'd convinced herself that they were fine as they are. They didn't need a ring or a promise or a ceremony to make them _more_.

But she's known for weeks that they haven't been quite right. As hard as he has tried to move on like she asked him to, she has seen it eating at him and has chosen to ignore it. But it's going to continue eating away at their relationship, at the very core of who they are, until something crumbles. And if it crumbles, then all of her fears come true all the same.

* * *

He checks into a hotel and turns the TV on to try and drown out his thoughts, but it doesn't work.

He just left. He doesn't know if he's going back.

His whole world is wrapped up in _Kensi_ and he can't even wish it any other way. He only wishes that it didn't come down to this decision.

He could go back. He could go back and she'd probably let him in, and they would go back to pretending that everything was fine. Maybe everything really was fine for Kensi, but it would always be pretending for him.

She makes him want _more_. He wants to not have to pretend.

He lays there for hours trying to change his own mind, but he can't. He wants more and she's made her position clear. He can't resign himself spending his life faking it with the woman he loves.

The fact that the alternative is _not _being with the woman he loves rips his heart to shreds. But he knows he'll only be able to fake it for so long, and eventually that unresolved issue and unmet need will corrode their relationship and his heart and it'll end up crumbling, and they'll be left in pieces all over again. It'll sneak into every argument and every late night, every question, fear, and doubt, and eventually it will destroy her faith in him and his in her.

Surely it's better to better to face it now, when maybe they can both still get out with at least some part of their hearts intact.

* * *

He's at the beach at first light, unable to sleep in the unfamiliar empty bed with all the thoughts of his suddenly murky future swirling in his head. He has to rent a board and wetsuit because his are back at the apartment where his things and her things are all mixed up with _their _things and he tries not to think yet about the painful process of detangling their lives from one another's.

She's there in the early morning light when his feet hit the sand after his third unsatisfactory run. She silently watches him approach and there is a long moment of tense quiet before he speaks.

"I'm sorry, Kens. I can't do it anymore. I tried, but I can't. We want different things. We _need_ different things; I can't give you what you need." There is a moment of silent shock, and then he whispers "goodbye." He leans in to kiss her softly on the forehead, carefully keeping the rest of his body away from hers. As soon as he tears his lips from her skin, he turns and moves quickly away, hoping to make it to somewhere private before the iron fist around his stomach and his heart brings him to his knees.

"Deeks, wait." She grabs his hand as he turns to go, and it's the first time that her simple touch has left shards of pain instead of sparks of wonder.

"It's true, the ring terrifies me, and I've convinced myself for years that that piece of paper doesn't mean anything to me.

"I've done this before and I failed. I've worn the ring and made the plans and then had it all fall apart. And I have this irrational fear that the universe is just waiting for me to take that leap again so it can tear it all apart again… like as long as we didn't label it, I didn't have to be afraid of losing it.

"But there is one thing I know; I want to spend the rest of my life with you and only you. I don't need a ring and a piece of paper to know that, and I don't think you do either. But I'm not afraid of it, either. Not with you. I choose to not be afraid, because I believe in you, and I believe in us."

She takes a deep breath as she reaches for the small box in her purse.

"Marry me, Deeks?"

"What?" He chokes out, astonished and unbelieving.

"Marry me. I don't want to be afraid anymore. I want you, forever. Marry me. Today, if you want. We can go knock down the door at the courthouse as soon as it opens in…" she looks down to check her watch "… two and a half hours. Just say you still want to marry me."

The grip around his heart releases, and he feels like he breathes freely for the first time in weeks.

"Yes. Of course, yes."

Snatching the ring from its box, he slides it on her finger before pulling her tight into his arms, holding on for dear life as she does the same. He's probably imagining it, but he thinks he can feel the cool band of the ring on her hand as her fingers press into his back.

They hold each other for long moments in the cool of the morning air. When they finally pull back, he takes her left hand and runs his thumb repeatedly over the glinting diamond. Smiling freely, he furrows his brow.

"Since you're the one proposing this time, shouldn't I be the one getting a ring?"

* * *

_AN: I really didn't want this to come across as Deeks being passive aggressive about getting Kensi to marry him—that's not how I envisioned it at all. I can only imagine the turmoil it causes for a man to work up the courage to ask a woman to marry him and be turned down… and then stay with her and be expected to forget about it. Especially for a man like Deeks, with his background and personality, I feel like being asked to live with that would eventually become unbearable and unhealthy both for the relationship and the people in it. _


	6. Sharing

They're heading back to the car after picking up lunch for everyone when he finds the opportunity to bring up the thing that has been bothering him all morning.

"Would you, uh, would you like to explain to me why exactly MY mouthguard was in YOUR mouth this morning?"

She stops walking to give him a sardonic glare.

"Don't be such a baby. Just wash it."

"I can't just wash it! Your spit has been all over it. Your germs are, like, embedded in it now."

She turns and raises her eyebrows at him pointedly.

"I'm the one who had your mouthguard in my mouth. I'm the one that should be complaining about germs."

Crossing his arms over his chest, he tilts his head down at her and quirks his eyebrows.

"Really?! You know how I feel about germs. Just because you don't care doesn't mean I can just ignore the fact that your saliva was all over something that's supposed to go exclusively in MY mouth! There's like seventy kinds of bacteria that live in your spit. Seventy, Kensi!"

She drops her armload of take-out containers in the back seat and turns to lean on the car and face him; her expression turns coy.

"You were not at all concerned about my saliva this morning. Pretty sure you already had whatever germs I have_ long_ before I used your mouthguard."

"It's not the same thing!" He pouts.

"How is it not the same thing?! You're telling me that you think your tongue in my mouth somehow does not transfer germs, but me using your mouthguard does?"

He pauses at that, not because he's ready to give up the argument but because his brain has suddenly switched tracks and instead of thinking of his next comeback he's now thinking of kissing Kensi. His brain tends to get stuck there.

They spent the early morning on the beach this morning, him surfing until the appeal of spending a few minutes wrapped around Kensi before work drew him away from the water and back onto the sand. He likes being wrapped around Kensi in any form, whether it's on the sand, the couch, or the wrestling mat. Lately, holding Kensi frequently progresses into kissing Kensi, a development that he's a huge fan of. That had been the case on the beach this morning, though not on the wrestling mat, unfortunately.

She breaks into his reverie with the answer to his original question:

"I accidentally grabbed your bag out of the car this morning instead of mine—which you would have known if you had even bothered to think about wearing your own mouthguard. All my other stuff was in my locker, so I didn't bother to go hunting down my bag for just that."

Ok, that he understands. Their go-bags are essentially identical until they're opened; then it becomes kind of obvious whose is whose. He definitely doesn't wear pink spandex tank tops, but he certainly doesn't complain about Kensi wearing them.

"But why couldn't you just tell me when we came out so we could trade them?" He whines, even though he's already been completely talked out of being upset.

She raises those eyebrows at him again, and he sheepishly remembers hiding behind the women's locker room door and ambushing her as she came out. Barreling into her, he'd swept her over his shoulder and charged headlong for the mat, dumping her unceremoniously on it while she was still catching her bearings. He figures he's lucky he hadn't incurred any real physical damage from that stroke of brilliance.

"There is no difference between this," she says, drawing close and pulling his head down for a brief but very thorough kiss, "and us swapping mouthguards."

Other than a slight breathiness in her voice, she continues speaking as if unaffected, but Kensi's kisses tend to leave him in a bit of a fog so he doesn't respond immediately.

"I'll buy you a new one if you're really so upset about it," she offers while his eyes are still blinking back into focus.

In response, he just draws her back to him and kisses her again.

"Nevermind," he breathes when he pulls away slightly but keeps her trapped between his body and the car. "I've decided I kinda like your germs."

* * *

_AN: I watched this week's episode and, while it seems that everybody else latched onto Kensi demanding Deeks give up his shirt, it was that first wrestling scene that really stuck with me. Probably AU since it doesn't look like Kensi and Deeks have necessarily sorted things out yet, but we'll see I guess._

_I'm discovering that I tend to swing back and forth between utter fluff like this piece, "If Asked" and "Of Cigars and Celebration" and angst like "In Due Time," "Crumble" and "Enough." Not really sure why that is. I'm a woman—that means I can blame the mood swings on hormones, right?_


	7. Everyday Intimacies

"Why don't you leave it down?"

His request sounds a little bit timid as his voice carries from the doorway to where she stands at the bathroom sink, preparing to pull up her hair for the day.

Giving him a silent questioning look, she puts the pins and elastics down and reaches for the straightener instead.

"I like it curly like that, " he interrupts again, a little bolder this time, as she's flipping the straightener on. There's clearly an unspoken request in the statement, and she cocks her head and sends him a questioning look.

Even on days when she leaves her hair down, it usually gets at least blow drying treatment to loosen the curls into more manageable waves, but right now it's wild and curly and untouched. She puts down the straightener and looks at him.

"Oookay..."

It's been a long time since she's had anyone who wanted to have an input on how she did her hair in the morning, and she's not quite sure how she feels about it. It's a very _boyfriend_ thing to request. But then, they've been falling asleep together and waking up together, spending all their days and all their nights and eating all their meals together for weeks, which are, she has to admit, also very _boyfriend_ things to do. Somehow this seems even more intimate though, and the way his eyes are softening as she reaches for the mousse to tame the flyaways doesn't do anything to alter that impression.

He clears his throat as she reaches up to pull the top back away from her face and she turns on him, wondering what on earth he could want this time.

"Can, uh, can I do it?"

Now that she was not expecting.

"You want to do my hair?" Her eyes blink uncomprehendingly.

"Well, yeah. Can I try it?"

Once in a while, she recalls, when they're slumped on the couch late at night, his hands find their way to her hair and comb through it gently, over and over again, smoothing and stroking and playing. She's never told him that she likes it, but she's never told him to stop either, so chances are he knows full well. It's never occurred to her just how much _he_ likes it.

"Did you want to be a hairdresser when you were a kid, or something?" She teases gently as she meets his eyes in the mirror.

"No, I just...I like your hair."

Wordlessly, she hands him the wide-toothed comb and the elastic over one shoulder and waits.

His larger fingers are a little bit clumsy and they tangle in the wild dark curls as he tries to separate the strands from one another and smooth them back. It's an odd sensation, having his rough fingers carding through her hair at the bathroom sink in the morning. It's both everyday and intimate, and it makes her wonder just how deep they're getting into this thing that they still never really talk about.

Suddenly, her mind pictures those same rough hands gently combing through the curly hair of a little blond girl as he pulls it back for school. There's no question who that little girl belongs to.

She has to clear her throat to offer a hint here and there on how to control the hair, and in the end it takes him ten times as long to do it as it would have taken her, and there are a few extra bumps she would have smoothed out, but when he steps back and surveys his work, he looks so proud and his eyes are so warm that she can't bring herself to comment on it.

At first it was only on the couch that they allowed this kind of closeness—like it was a little island and the things that happened there weren't really part of the real world. This morning she woke up tucked into his chest while he snored in her ear, and when they opened their eyes and moved to start the day, neither had found it awkward to untangle from the other as they got up.

Gradually, more and more pieces of their apartments have become part of that island. One day the whole living room became a contact zone. Another day, subtle touches in the kitchen while they grabbed breakfast suddenly became okay. Today, apparently, the bathroom became a shared space.

Once he rinses the hair products off his hands, he reaches for his toothbrush—at home in the cup, next to hers—and brushes his teeth in the mirror behind her as she's finishing her makeup.

One day soon they're going to have to start really talking about this, but for now this quiet intimacy that's growing between them feels comfortable and right. She's only just beginning to feel like herself again after Afghanistan, and their constant togetherness, whatever the label on it, has a lot to do with that. She suspects he as his own reasons for sticking close by. Regardless, whether he's partner, friend, or boyfriend, he's her solid ground in a shifting world, and she's his tether when he's afraid of losing himself.

For today, that's enough.

* * *

_A/N: Just a little snippet of a moment. Kensi's hair was down and curly in yesterday's ep (6x04), and my brain automatically jumped to the conclusion that Deeks had something to do with that. I'm always a little surprised how fascinated guys can be by women's hair..._

_Reviews make me want to write more._


	8. Outside Help

"Can I buy you a—" he cuts himself off midsentence even as he plops himself onto the stool next to hers.

Kensi's sitting on a barstool at their favorite bar, waiting for their drinks and the rest of the team to arrive for their customary post-case decompression. She raises her eyebrows at Special Agent Matthew Flynn as he sits and smiles sheepishly.

It's a weeknight, so the bar is not overly crowded or noisy, and it's filled with familiar faces. They know and are known here, not as regulars, exactly—they're too cautious for that—but as familiar faces and familiar orders. Sam has his favorite corner booth, so she knows exactly where to watch for their arrival. The bartender is giving Flynn a sympathetic look; he knows this scenario. There are variations on the theme, but they all end pretty much the same way.

"I was going to ask if I could buy you a drink, but I see that there's someone who would probably object to that." Flynn nods at the pair of rings on her left hand and she smiles and nods as she runs her thumb over them, spinning them around her finger.

"You weren't wearing those earlier."

He's been working with them on a case for the last three days and has been subtly testing the waters of flirting with her for the past twenty-four hours. In a profession that tends to harden people or make them unbearably cocky, he's been a breath of refreshing sincerity, and even his flirting has a polite, deferential quality that speaks well of him. They all genuinely like him, and she actually feels a little sorry for his disappointment.

"We've been in and out of covers for days. Hetty keeps them safe for us so they don't get misplaced in all the transitions when that happens." She explains.

"We?" He's a little confused until a blonde head appears close behind her just as two drinks are placed on the counter in front of her.

She seems to telepathically sense his arrival and smiles as she tips her head back to indicate the man behind her. "My husband, Marty Deeks."

"Flynn," Deeks nods in acknowledgment.

"Ah," Flynn nods "so you really were flirting earlier." He's been keeping his eyes open this last couple days, ever since he decided testing the waters with Kensi might be worth the risk, and he hadn't been quite able to figure them out. The case has kept them all busy enough and with Kensi and Deeks in and out of covers the whole time, for someone who hadn't known them before it had been difficult to distinguish what was cover persona, what was natural partner closeness, and what might be genuine flirting. Now he knows.

"Best of both worlds." Deeks grins as he grabs his drink "I get to flirt with my wife at home _and _at work."

"How did I miss this?" He wonders out loud. He's a little stupefied that he's not only been trying to flirt with some other guy's wife, but that he's been spending hours on end with both of them and never realized they were really a couple.

"Professional line." Deeks, who certainly had not missed Flynn's early attempts at flirting with Kensi, tells him, drawing an imaginary line in the air between them.

"Work is work, home is home," Kensi shrugs. "We try to keep them separate as much as possible. Clearly we're doing pretty well this week. Probably not true of all weeks."

Deeks tips his glass at Flynn, "What are you drinking? First round's on us."

Flynn snorts.

"I was just trying to hit on your wife, and now you're the one buying my drinks? That seems a little... weird."

Deeks laughs. While he can't say he enjoyed watching Flynn "hit on" Kensi, he liked Flynn from the start, and his version of flirtation is so much more respectful than what Deeks is used to having to deal with that it had actually raised his opinion of the man rather than lowered it. He certainly can't fault him for his taste.

"Hey man, I don't blame you. She's kind of awesome. I applaud your good taste, and I assume you will refrain from doing it again now that you know." His voice and his eyes are friendly, but he takes a small step closer to Kensi's back—a clear signal that there would be consequences for ignoring that friendly advice.

"Of course." Flynn nods, grimacing slightly. "Sorry about that."

"You're not going to find one like this girl anywhere," he squeezes Kensi's shoulder affectionately, "but if you're willing to lower your sights a little, I'm sure there are some ladies here tonight who'd be willing to share a drink with you. I'd offer to be your wingman, but since I've had my wings clipped, I'm pretty happy to roost right here." He moves his hand to Kensi's hip as he speaks, just as Kensi's elbow meets his side.

"Wings clipped? Really?" She glares at him.

He grins down at her.

"Come on! Get it? Wingman? Wings? Roost? That was a good one!"

* * *

_AN: I was completely blown away by the review response to that last chapter. You guys are awesome—I was a little hesitant about that one, so thanks for all your reviews and support. I really can't wait to post new things when you guys are so encouraging._

_I have no idea at all where this one came from. It just showed up in my brain as I was writing chapter 7 and wouldn't go away. I'd have had it done and out several days ago, but my computer crashed last week and then my sister got married over the weekend, so between wedding and computerlessness, I haven't gotten to it._

_The fluff is continuing here, but beware, the angst is coming. The next shot is almost finished and it's... well, not as fluffy and fun._


	9. Ritual

This is a circumstance she never considered when he first slipped those rings on her finger on the day they made their forever promises to each other.

She should have thought about it, given the way their world works. She'd thought through a million potential issues and obstacles before she said yes, but this precise aspect of the situation had never entered her mind.

But reality has set in and now they're standing there as the rings make their reverse journey off her finger. His fingers are warm around hers as he slides them off, his grip firm yet gentle as always.

She feels almost naked without them, but it's a feeling she'll have to get used to. She reaches hesitantly for his left hand and slides his narrow gold band off, dropping it next to hers and staring silently at them as they lie there on the desk.

"For the next few hours, you're not you and I'm not me." He says, tilting her chin up and drawing her eyes up to his. "But when this is over, I'm going to put these back where they belong," he pinches her rings between thumb and forefinger and holds them before her eyes, much like he had on the night he proposed, "and then I'm going to take you home and remind you just how married we really are." His grin is suggestive and impudent and it goes a long way toward releasing the knot of tension in her stomach.

It's the first time since their wedding months earlier that going under for a case has required them to remove their rings, and she finds it shockingly hard to take them off. It's not supposed to be this hard, but she's so in love with life as Kensi Deeks that going under as someone else is harder than it's ever been. Still, they'll do it, and they'll do it well—because this is their job and because they have a life to get back to when it's all over.

* * *

For years, that is their ritual. Every time a case requires one or both of them to remove their rings, they find a quiet corner and slip them off together. Whenever it's possible, he is the one who takes hers off, his eyes telling her the whole time that he might be taking the rings off, but he's not removing his love or support.

She does the same for him.

When it's all over, he'll be the one to slide them on again. Sometimes he playfully recites his vows again as he does it, commenting cheekily that he feels like he gets to marry her all over again each time. Sometimes he does it silently, promising with his eyes that his promises are still as true as they were the first time he slid them on her finger. He must have recited those vows a hundred times over the years. She comes to love that little ritual, loves to watch him slip the rings back where they belong at the end of a long day.

Until one day he doesn't.

She returns to the mission in a daze, eyes red-rimmed but dry for the moment. Sam and Callen are watching her carefully, tenderly, trying to figure out just what on earth to say and how to let her know they're there for her. Their gentle looks just make it worse. She avoids Nell, who will be caring and sympathetic and won't know how to deal with it either.

The only things she can think of are sitting in Hetty's desk safe. That's where she heads first, the walls closing in around her and sucking the air from her lungs as she moves. Hetty meets her halfway.

"Hetty, I need—"

Before she can work up the strength to finish the sentence, Hetty is pressing three gold bands into her trembling hand. As soon as the cool metal touches her palm, she whirls to escape.

"Ms. Blye—" She hears behind her, but she ignores it and keeps walking. For years she's kept that name at work, but at the moment she's not Ms. Blye, Special Agent. She's not sure she ever will be that again. Right now, all she is is Mrs. Deeks, brand new widow. It feels like that's all she'll ever be again.

She drives, all but unseeing, for an hour, then two, then three, one hand on the wheel and one wrapped around the three small circlets. After an hour of her death grip on them, they start to cut painfully into her palm, but she ignores the discomfort and holds on tighter. After two, Nell calls and she silences the ringing of the phone and then shuts it off altogether.

After three, she winds up at the beach staring down at three gold rings in her reddened palm. She still feels naked without them, even more so now after years of wearing them than she had that first time he slipped them off.

Grasping the two that have lived on her hand for half a decade now, she moves them toward her finger, longing to have the comfortably familiar weight of them on her hand again. But before they touch her finger, she draws back and grips them hard. Once, early on before she realized a tradition had been established, she had put them back on herself before he found her to do it, and had been surprised to see the depth of the disappointment in his eyes when he discovered that she hadn't left it for him. Since then, she's always waited for him to do it.

This time, the wait would be endless.

Unable to stomach the idea of putting them back on herself, she slips his plain band on her thumb instead.

From the corner of her eye she watches a blond surfer ride a wave in, and her grief-stricken mind snaps to attention. She feels a flare of hope, imagining that it's really a normal weekend and they're at the beach and it's him riding in toward her. When the man lands and his hair is too short and his smile isn't right, grief hits her in the kidneys all over again as the hope dies out.

She turns and moves quickly away, hoping to make it to somewhere private before the iron fist around her stomach and her heart brings her to her knees.

She makes it around a corner behind an outcropping of rock before her knees give out and she hits the ground. Every system in her body physically revolts alongside her heart and she loses her breakfast on the sand as she goes down, shivering uncontrollably.

The grief is a physical thing, pressing down on her and twisting her lungs until she can't breathe, sapping the strength from her muscles.

She can't bear the thought of going home, back to the house where they'd built a life, a love, a million memories. He'll be everywhere there and yet he'll never be there again, and she can't comprehend that dichotomy, let alone survive in the midst of it.

She's not sure how long she's sat there when the first cool wind of the night bites into her bare skin.

Slowly, a new awareness brings the steel back into her spine.

He's not coming back, but she can still do one last thing for him.

Justice was the only thing she knew before him, and it's all she has left now. There's still an open case, a man to be hunted down and punished for ripping her life apart.

* * *

Her back is ramrod straight as she enters the mission again, sharply focused this time, in stark contrast to her earlier visit.

"Ms. Blye—" Hetty tries again as she enters the briefing room unannounced.

"Mrs. Deeks." She corrects her, face resolute. "My name is Kensi Deeks, and I want the man who killed my husband."

* * *

_AN: Sorry about that. It just kind of grew out of the rings in Chapter 8 and the beach scene in Chapter 5 (brownie points if you can identify the sentence that's duplicated from Chapter 5 without going back to look). _

_This collection hit 100 reviews today- wow! Thanks so much for all your thoughts and reviews and messages.  
_

_I'm out of ideas at the moment—if you have suggestions, I'm open to hearing them. _


	10. Choices

This isn't exactly going as planned.

He's kneeling in the sand, diamond in his palm, staring up at his dark-eyed partner, and her silence is twisting his guts into a seething mass of knots.

He had thought all this out so thoroughly, but now he's wondering if he'd chosen wrong. They aren't a fancy dinner and dancing kind of couple. They aren't grand gestures or public displays. They aren't romantic music and candlelight. There is a place for all those things, but when he asked her to spend her life with him he wanted to do it in a way that fit with the way they really lived their life.

So, they're in running clothes on the beach, three miles into a five mile run, the first rays of the sun are coming up over the boardwalk beside them and glinting blue and gold off the rolling waves of the Pacific, because he wants his morning runs to be by her side for the rest of their lives. He bought special running shorts for this—ones with zippers on the pockets so that there's no way that obscenely expensive and ridiculously tiny piece of bling could bounce out in the sand in the three miles between his apartment and the place where he's nervously kneeling. He just dropped a large chunk of his savings on the thing, so he figures another forty dollars in order to make sure it actually arrives at its destination is a good investment.

Except that both those purchases will be worthless if the _yes_ he's hoping for doesn't come out of her mouth soon. When he first knelt down, the racing of his heart had been at least partially due to the competitive pace of their run. Now, he's pretty sure it has more to do with nerves than exertion. It's been several long, agonizing moments, and she still hasn't said anything.

When she finally does speak, it's weak and breathy and almost doesn't even sound like her.

"If we do this, Hetty will know. She'll separate us."

He breathes a sigh of relief—while he still would have preferred an immediate yes, this is a hesitation that he'd thought through thoroughly and has an answer for. She's not hesitating to marry him, she's just weighing what marrying him might cost both of them. That's something he had expected and prepared for.

He can't decide if the situation is hard because they might have to choose between two good choices or because they might have to choose between two bad ones, but it's made even harder by the fact that they don't even know if they're going to be asked to make any choice at all. At this point, it's all hypothetical.

One the good side, he can choose Kensi as his partner or Kensi as his wife. They're both great choices. They're both options he would be thrilled at if it weren't for that pesky _or_ in between them. He'd never considered before that choosing between two good options could be even harder than choosing between two bad ones.

On the bad side, he can lose Kensi as his partner or lose Kensi as his wife. Both those options are bad, both things he hopes to avoid. But, when he looks at it that way, it's actually an easier decision.

He reaches for her hands and wraps them in his but stays on his knees.

"I know there may come a time when we have to make a choice. But I also know that I want you as my wife more than I want you as my partner."

Right up until the moment when he first held her ring in his hand, he hadn't been entirely sure that he could make that choice—he loves Partner Kensi, but the moment that Wife Kensi had become not just a nebulous future possibility but a concrete immediate intention, he had known what the answer was.

He wants her as his wife, even if it means he can't keep her as his partner.

"Listen to me, Kens."

She's staring down at their hands, conflicted emotions written all over her face. There's no way she hadn't considered all this before. They've talked about it before, but she has yet to have the revelatory moment that he had when he touched her ring for the first time and _knew_.

They've been a secret—officially, anyway—for over a year. Everyone outside their inner circle assumed they were a couple long before they actually were, which actually made it easier when they became a couple for real and wanted to keep it to themselves. People had been reading secrets into their relationship for so long that when there actually was a secret, it didn't take much to keep people thinking that it was still their imaginations. Deeks is pretty sure that Callen and Sam and Nell knew they were head over heels for each other long before they were willing to admit it, and if they've figured out that their relationship has changed, they've graciously allowed them their secret. As for Eric, well, social aptitude had never been his strong suit.

But, he thinks, they're past the point of secrets now. He wants Kensi for his wife, and he wants his friends to know and to be there to celebrate with them, even if it means opening themselves up to the possibility that Hetty might separate them in the field.

He can reconcile himself to someone else watching her back. It won't be the same, but he trusts Callen and Sam and he could happily grow to accept someone else being the one to call her partner if it means he gets to be the one to call her _wife_.

What he can't even begin to reconcile himself to is the possibility of someone else being the one to wake up next to her in the morning, someone else being the father of her children, someone else holding her hand and touching her skin and taking her out for date nights.

This is it. _She_ is it. And sometimes getting the best out of life means sacrificing what is good to make room for the best.

"Just hear me out, Kens. Think about it. I want to be your partner. It's still totally possible that Hetty will leave us together even once she officially knows."

He grins up at her with a little more levity and confidence then he actually feels at the moment.

"It's Hetty—you know that she knows everything anyway. She probably knew before we did, and she hasn't separated us yet.

"I want to be your partner," he repeats, adjusting his grip on her hands. "But I'm not willing to sacrifice the future in order to hold onto the present. We're not going to be partners forever. That's a fact of life. You know that—it just doesn't happen in our business. Things change, agencies change, teams change. They could change at the drop of a hat for some other reason entirely. We could get one more year or five or fifteen, but one day we're going to be doing something else or be paired with someone else.

"This," he holds the ring up in front of her again, "this is forever. This is you and me and the next fifty years and a life that no one else can take away from us."

There in an interminable wait when he finishes speaking before she has gathered her thoughts enough to respond. He waits, heart racing, hoping that she's come to the same conclusion that he did.

"I think," she starts, and her face is solemn and gives nothing away, "that I would like to keep you as my partner."

His heart begins to burrow down to hide somewhere in the vicinity of his intestines. He'd been so convinced that this was right, that they were ready, and now he doesn't know how they'll move on from it.

He becomes aware that he's muttering, but he's not quite sure exactly what he's saying, or if he's really saying anything at all.

"Okay... that's... okay... we can just... that's—"

Her hand comes down to lift his eyes from the sand back to meet hers.

"But," she stresses, allowing a smile to break through, "if it comes down to it, I would rather have you as my husband."

The world that had been crumbling around him is suddenly whole and bright again and a grin splits his face

"Really?"

Her answer is in her smile and in her hands on his face as they draw him to his feet and up to meet her lips, but she whispers it against his lips anyway:

"Really."


	11. Legacy

_AN: This is a follow-up from Chapter 9, _Ritual_; consider yourself warned. That said, this is a little bit happier than the original._

* * *

The bathroom floor is cold, but it's become rather familiar over the last few months. First, there were the hiding days. The first weeks when she spent large chunks of time sitting there escaping from her mother and her friends who were constantly "checking in" and "visiting" and "helping out." Sometimes she did it under the guise of showering. Sometimes she just locked herself in to escape from being forced to interact with the well-meaning people that came to stay with her and babysit her for the first few weeks when all she wanted was to crawl into a hole and pretend that her life had ceased going on because his had.

Then came the teary days. The day she discovered yesterday's clothes on the bathroom floor because Deeks hadn't been in to pick them up after her. The day she knocked his favorite shampoo off the ledge and the bottle broke on the floor, spreading the scent so uniquely him through their bathroom for the first time in weeks and overwhelming her. The day she checked under the sink for an extra bottle of body wash and automatically made a mental note to add his to the shopping list, too, before she remembered that his was gone for a reason.

Then, sometimes, there were the quiet days. Days when she would come home from work and discover that the emptiness of the house made it feel enormous, and somehow the confined space of the bathroom made it feel just a little less empty.

Lately, there have been sick days: days when what little she's eaten decides to not stay down and the smell of something that never bothered her before suddenly overwhelms her.

The first missed period she hadn't even noticed in all the turmoil of that first devastating month. Those weeks it had been all she could do to force enough food, water, and air into her body to continue the hunt for justice. Anything beyond that had never entered her radar.

The second missed period she had blamed on the stress and the grief and her admittedly poor eating and sleeping habits recently. When justice was finally served it didn't bring her appetite back, all it did was leave room for the grief to roll back in, full force without the buffer of vengeance to check it.

Her calendar just reminded her that she's now into three missed periods and, despite the fact that she finds food difficult to get down on the best of days, both her bras and her jeans have been feeling tight.

By now the signs are too many and too obvious for her to keep pretending that she doesn't know what they mean.

This time, sitting on the bathroom floor alone, it's a discovery day. She's staring at a little white stick and a little blue plus sign trying to figure out if she's excited or devastated and wondering just how she's going to raise a baby who will never know his father.

* * *

She waits to tell the others until it just can't be put off any longer. Every time she thinks about it, she sees Deeks bouncing off the walls as he figures out the perfect way to tell their friends; she sees that delighted grin and expectant expression that she knows would have accompanied all his thoughts about the baby. By the time she finally quietly admits it to the others, most of them have guessed already.

She tells her belly as it grows "Daddy loves you" because she knows it's true, even if Daddy never knew it existed.

The pregnancy is a blessing and a curse. Every moment, every change, every appointment she goes to alone or with Nell is a reminder that the man who should be beside her, rejoicing with her, reveling in the growth of their baby and the changes in her body, is never going to know his son. Despite Callen and Sam and Nell and everyone else rallying around her, the pregnancy is often a reminder of just how alone she is now. She's never felt quite so lonely, even in the days right after Deeks' death, as she does in the moments when the baby kicks or she hears his heartbeat or the contractions hit and there's no one there to share it with. Pregnancy mood swings plus fresh grief make for a turbulent, difficult nine months.

Still, in many ways the pregnancy rescues her from her grief and anger. It saves her from herself and reminds her that no matter how alone she feels, she's never really going to be alone again. Deeks left that much of himself with her, inside her. She chokes down food she never feels like eating because this baby deserves to live and thrive and be healthy. She resists the urge to be reckless because there's a little piece of Deeks growing inside her that must be protected at all costs. Gradually, she opens up and starts letting people back into her life, because this little boy deserves more of a family than what she can give him all by herself.

In the end, it's her salvation. By month nine she can't even begin to guess where she would have been without this tiny mutant ninja assassin to live for. She's fairly certain that he has, quite literally, saved her life. Just like his father.

* * *

Twenty-eight years later, Andrew Martin Deeks is still her whole world. Single motherhood has been the hardest, loneliest, most joyous, rewarding adventure of her life. Tall and tan, Andrew has his mother's hair and his father's eyes. He's done three tours with the Navy and now he's home and is making his way through law school. His hair is curling over his ears and he's falling in love with a woman named Leah.

She is more soft and sweet and feminine than Kensi has ever been, but she's got steel in her backbone and fire in her eyes, and Kensi loves her from the moment that Andrew brings her home. Their relationship is less turbulent than Kensi and Deeks' was, but as Kensi watches it grow, she comes to believe that it's the same relentless kind of love, just in softer form.

If there's one way Kensi feels she has succeeded, it's that Andrew is far less broken than his parents were when they finally found each other. He's never had his Dad, but he has heard every story she could remember. He has known every day that he was loved, by his mother, by the father he never knew, and by the makeshift family that has always surrounded him. He has known the troubles and brokenness of the world but also known its joys and its goodness.

When the time comes that Andrew stops in one day to tell his mother that he's going to ask Leah to marry him, she leaves him alone for a few minutes to dig into the back of her top dresser drawer.

When she returns, she is carrying an old velvet box, picking pieces of dust and lint off it as she walks. Softly, she takes his hand and wraps his fingers around the box.

"You don't have to, but if you want them..."

Andrew furrows his brow for a moment, then opens the box.

"These were yours." It's a statement, not a question, though he's never seen those two gold rings inside before in his life.

Months into her journey of grief, after several attempts to put them back on herself, Kensi had finally given up. She slipped her engagement ring and wedding band back in their box and tucked them away and had his band resized to fit her ring finger instead. Those rings were his to put back on, and if he was never there to do it then it was never going to feel right to do it herself.

"You never wore them."

Andrew's statement pulls her from her memories and back to his blue eyes. It's the one story he has never heard.

"No. Not after he was gone." She wanders back in her own thoughts for a moment before smiling softly and telling him the story of that beloved ritual and the day that it ended. She tells him about her struggle to figure out how to live without him and the decision to wear his ring instead of her own.

"If there was one thing in this life that I never doubted, Andrew, it was that your father loved me. He loved me like I wasn't a mess, or maybe like it didn't matter that I was a mess. He loved me like I was his whole world. And he would have loved you the same way the moment he knew you existed.

"I was so jaded when I met him that I didn't believe that kind of love really existed anymore; it took a long time for me to start believing again, but he waited. He'd never had anyone love him like he deserved, but still he loved like it was the most natural thing in the world. And I loved him like crazy. In a world without bad guys, I have no doubt that he'd still be here by my side, loving me and teasing me and driving me crazy. We'd be that crazy old gray haired couple in their rocking chairs always fighting but still falling more in love with each other every day.

"That love is what gave me the strength to get though without him. That's what gave me the strength to raise you.

"I never could wear those without him by my side. But they were a part of a... an extraordinary kind of love story. And he would want you to have them to give to the woman you love, because somehow, even though you never knew him, you know how to love like he did. I want to know that his extraordinary kind of love didn't end with him, that it will have kids and grandkids and will leave a legacy like no one left for him. He wanted that so bad, to be a dad like his never was, to leave a legacy that he could be proud of. I just wish he could be here to see that he succeeded in that. He would be so proud of you. And he would have loved Leah."

* * *

When Andrew and Leah come to dinner, weeks later, with Kensi's engagement ring on Leah's finger, it heals something long broken in Kensi's heart. It doesn't remove that old ache for the man who gave it to her, but it reminds her that the story has not ended, that his love lives on in the heart of his son. It seems right, somehow, that the rings he chose for her will have a place in another love story, a new legacy of his love that will live on long after they're both gone.

* * *

_AN: I really had no plans to continue with _Ritual_ (chapter 9), but __**ittybittyalissa**__ suggested the idea for this one, and it eventually decided it wanted to be written. I apparently have been on a married Densi kick lately, but the next couple that are in the works are set more in the current timeframe of the show. They're both a little stuck at the moment, but reviews tend to inspire me to finish things. :)_


	12. Blue

_AN: And the fluff returns… told ya reviews speed up my muse. This is a tag to last night's episode, "Traitor" (6x09). _

* * *

They're sitting on his couch that night, her toes curled under his thigh, absentmindedly watching late-night TV when she blurts out the question that's been bothering her all day.

"What's your favorite color?"

"What?"

"I want to know what your favorite color is."

"Kens," he lays a gentle hand on her ankle, "is this about earlier?"

"You know all these things about me that even I forgot all about. And I don't know how you do, but somehow you just... know. You always know. And I don't know those things."

He starts to say something, but her pleading expression cuts him off.

"It's not that I don't want to know them. I just—I'm not good at this like you are. It's like you're constantly paying attention and making notes, and I don't know how to be that person. I still want to know all those things about you, but I don't, and I feel like that makes me a bad friend because—"

"Kensi," he cuts her off, rubbing a thumb over the arch of her foot. "It doesn't make you a bad friend. We look at the world differently, that's all. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Besides, I think you know more about me than you think you do. Just because you've never sat down and consciously made a list doesn't mean you don't know things. You're a federal agent, it's in your nature to be paying attention."

They use the word friend, and they mean it, but they mean more than that, too. They've finally reached the point where they acknowledge that they are really more than just friends, and that they're moving toward something real and serious. Still, they haven't put a label on it yet, so friend is the closest word she feels comfortable using. They're the kind of friends that consider occasional snuggling acceptable and don't ever consider dating other people. It's been good and it's been comfortable while their worlds have been settling back into what might be called normal, but she thinks maybe it's time for her to get intentional about helping them take steps forward.

"Thank you. But I can be better. You've never asked me to be, but I can be. Maybe I can't always do it the way you do without even trying, but I can be intentional about it, and maybe sometimes I'll just have to ask outright, like right now. What's your favorite color?"

"Guess."

"Deeks-" she growls at him as he smirks.

"Seriously, guess. I think you know a lot more about me than you think you do, so if you had to guess, what's my favorite color?"

She furrows her brow and squints her eyes, mentally weighing obvious clues against more subtle hints. She looks so serious as she thinks about it that it strikes him as particularly adorable. He particularly adores this woman, and he'd be lying if he said that being the focus of that intent concentration didn't feel good. It doesn't bother him that she can't spout off lists of secret information about him, but it's nice to know that she wants to, that's he's important enough that she feels like she needs to be better at it.

"Blue. Your favorite color is blue, too. The ocean is blue and your favorite surfboard is mostly blue." She starts ticking them off on her fingers as she speaks. "Your toothbrush is blue, and that stupid thing in the kitchen that you're so crazy about is blue, and you wear blue shirts at least twice a week, which is quite a bit when you think about how many other color options there are in the world."

Her face is triumphant and she stabs him in the chest with her finger as she finishes her list.

"See? You do know things about me." She beams at the confirmation that she is right and it makes his heart squeeze. He gets to be the one to make her that happy. It's a heady, extraordinary thought.

"Make a list if you want, Kens. Write it down or tell me all the things you know, but don't worry that I'm sitting here waiting for it. Neither of us are very good at sharing things; if you don't know things it doesn't make it your fault that I haven't shared them."

She looks up at him so softly that he has restrain himself from leaning down to kiss her. Despite the further developments in their "thing," he hasn't kissed her in over a year, and it's starting to get very hard to resist. He snaps himself to attention and a smirk replaces the darkening of his eyes.

"Clearly, I will still have a better list, since I am the one who is the _master _of observation, after all, but I will allow that you could probably come up with—"

His pink cat pillow hits him in the face, full force.

He snatches it up and thwacks it against her shoulder as she tackles him, and they spend a few minutes tumbling around in the at-home, no-holds-barred version of a wrestling match. At the end, Kensi would definitely claim that she won, but it ends with her wedged in beside him on the couch, curled into his side and pressed into his body, so he considers himself the real winner there.

After long minutes of comfortable silence where they tune in to the late night talk show's running ridicule of the latest teen fad movie, he speaks quietly.

"You know I meant what I said earlier, right?"

Her chin lifts from its resting place on his shoulder and her eyes ask him to clarify.

"I love that I get to know those things about you that nobody else knows."

For a moment, her smile is soft like it was earlier, and then it morphs into a devilish grin.

"Yeah, well, I know some things about you, too. Some things that no one else knows."

He growls and fixes her with a pointed glare: "Things you will never, ever share with the guys. Or anyone else, for that matter."

"Well, I don't know—

"Kensi" he says sternly, "tell anyone, and I'll tell the guys about your journal and your magazines and that your favorite color is blue because it's the color of my eyes. "

She blushes but doesn't back down. If anything, she looks more mischievous.

"I might be con—"

This time he does kiss her. He resisted soft Kensi, barely, but this Kensi that's so close to him, eyes sparkling and wicked, challenging and taunting him, is just too much. This is the Kensi that he's in love with; the one who keeps him on his toes and drives him to distraction and then turns around and goes soft and feminine with him. Only with him.

It's just long enough to be more than just a press of their lips, but not long enough that they get carried away. He holds his breath when it ends, wondering if that was the wrong thing to do, but she just blushes and lays her chin back on his shoulder. _Ok_, he thinks. He's allowed to kiss her now. _Ok. Good to know. Good. To. Know. _

It feels like they've come a long way tonight; they've learned a lot: he'll be the repository of her secrets, and she'll be his, and he's allowed to kiss her. All that in one night is unprecedented for them, and it wasn't even hard. He's come to expect that the big moments that move them forward will be emotionally difficult for one or both them. Often, the process has been painful. But, tonight, they're curled together, grinning and light-hearted and for once it doesn't feel like they've had to pay a steep price for their progress.

In their never-ending journey of "one step forward, two steps back," tonight feels like two steps forward.


	13. Say It

"Marty, hey man!"

A voice from just down the beach startles them out of their conversation as they sit on the sand late one Saturday afternoon. The man it comes from is tall and dark, striding toward them with a blonde on his arm. Kensi decides immediately that the hair color is fake, but it's a classy kind of dye job pinned up in a relaxed ponytail, so she reserves judgment for now.

The two men drift into what Kensi calls a "cool man hug" and then slap each other on the back while she and the blonde smile awkwardly at each other.

It takes a few minutes of catching up before Deeks and the tall man—she decides from listening to their conversation that his name must be James—realize that they still need to make introductions.

Kensi finds out that the blonde's name is Amy, wife of James, who is a law school buddy of Deeks'. She smiles politely while James makes the introductions, and then Deeks is grinning madly and tugging her into his side as he introduces her.

"This is Kensi Blye, my fiancée."

She laughs at the way his face lights up as she shakes Amy's hand, and he just keeps a death grip on her hand and grins as they chat amiably for a few minutes until Amy tugs on James' arm and reminds him that they were leaving because they're on a schedule and have a plan to catch.

As they turn to go, Deeks looks down at her out of the corner of his eyes and nudges her shoulder with his.

"Did you hear that?"

She furrows her brow.

"Hear what?"

As a federal agent, she's constantly listening to everyday conversations, looking for hints of anything illegal or even just idiotic. She's pretty good at ferreting out subtle hints that things are really not as they seem, even in innocent interactions. Still, their conversation hadn't struck her as anything other than a couple of old buddies running into each other at the beach.

She thought at first that his wide grin was a result of running into an old friend and good memories, but James didn't strike her as being someone he had been particularly close to. In another moment, he solves that mystery and answers her question at the same time. Cocking his head to the side, his grin widens still more.

"My fiancée. My fiancée, Kensi Blye. That's the first time I've said that out loud."

He's positively beaming. They've been engaged for all of one week and he's right, they haven't had the opportunity to actually introduce themselves as such yet. They've said _we're engaged _and _Deeks proposed _and probably several other variations, but she still has yet to actually say the words _my fiancée._

"Try it. Just say it."

She raises her eyebrows at him. She doesn't want to admit it, but she is kind of anxious to see how the words taste on her tongue.

"Say it," he persists, his voice low and playful and his eyebrows waggling at her.

Still she resists. Partly because it feels weird to say it just for the sake of saying it out loud, and partly because it's just in her nature to balk. It wouldn't be them if he didn't nag and she didn't resist. They're getting so much better at breaking that cycle where it counts, but in these playful moments the old habits still reign.

"I know for fact that unless you've been practicing in front of the mirror, you haven't said it out loud yet either. Come on, just try it."

She wants to scoff at him for suggesting that she might be the kind of girl to practice saying such a thing, but what she'd rather not share is that while she hasn't tested out the _my fiancée_ title yet, she has, in fact, tried out _Mrs. Kensi Deeks_ once or twice in the silence of her own apartment.

She relents, because he's adorable and because she wants to avoid him ferreting that little piece of information out of her.

"Marty Deeks, my fiancée. There, are you happy now?"

Despite her best efforts, she can't quite contain the grin that sneaks across her face when she says it. Darn him.

She would have said that everything felt real when he slipped the ring on her finger and she said yes. She's pretty sure she was there and fully aware as they were telling her mother and then their friends. Still, in this moment, with those words spoken out loud and hanging the air between them, it all becomes so much more real. They're getting married. Finally.

They stand there in the sand for a few minutes, grinning like idiots at each other, and she doesn't even care that they must look ridiculous to the passersby who are moving around them.

She's going to marry her best friend, and hell and high water don't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting in the way of that.

* * *

_AN: I find it interesting how powerful certain phrases can be when uttered out loud. I'm not married, but my brother has been married for seven years now. I'm completely used to saying "my sister-in-law," but once in a while for some reason I say "my brother's wife" instead, and it strikes me as crazy still, every time, to think that my bubba has a _wife_. __For some reason, some titles are just more meaningful when spoken aloud, and I could totally see Deeks having this reaction the first time he gets to say "fiancee." Maybe I'll have to do a husband/wife follow up at some point. _

_Love to hear what you think. _


	14. Helping

"Just for your information, when I asked you to put on a shirt, I meant put it _on,_ not hang it around your neck like you're Right Said Fred." Deeks grumbles to a smug Kip Brigham as they sip their drinks at his favorite bar the Thursday night after they close the Chapman case.

"You're just upset because you don't want _your_ girl lookin' at me with my shirt off. And she was definitely lookin'." Kip teases. Kip's always been cocky, and fame and fortune haven't checked that tendency.

"I'm upset because you sold me out! Isn't that against some kind of man code? You can't sell out a brother to his girl!"

"So she is your girl." It's a statement, not a question. Kip looks smug and, with a mental groan, Deeks realizes he just walked into a trap.

"What? No. She's not… not my girl." While it's certainly what he wants, and he's pretty sure it's what she wants, the last year has been rough and they're just not quite there yet; he's not sure whose fault that is at this point, but he doesn't need Kip interfering.

"So you just dragged her out of my house the other day cuz you were in that much of a hurry to get back to work? Not because you were jealous that she was checkin' me out."

He knows Kip is just ragging on him, but he can't help but rise to the bait. They've always been like this; if Ray was like a protective older brother because they'd needed each other in a rotten situation, he thinks maybe his friendship with Kip is like what it might have been to have a brother in a normal family: a fondly tolerated pain in the butt.

"I dragged her out of your house because you couldn't stop making comments about things I said about her—things that you were not supposed to share!"

He's been friends with Kip Brigham for nineteen years, which means Kip knows more about him than he's particularly comfortable with. It also means that Kip is secure enough in their friendship to know that he'll be forgiven for just about anything, including the oversharing of personal information with his partner. That makes him dangerous.

"I didn't say anything!" Kip objects

"Yeah, you didn't _say _anything, you just implied it and _winked_ at me. Kensi is smarter than you and me and Dr. Weidman combined, she's knows exactly what you weren't saying."

"So you _don't _want your girl to know that you're crazy about her? See here I thought that was the kind of thing that made women fall all over you. But my bad, if you don't want her fallin' all over you, I'll stop helping."

Deeks leans back and runs a hand through his hair.

"You're going to stop helping because you're not going to see her again for a _long _time."

"Yeah, good luck with that. Cuz now that she knows that you're friends wit' _all _of this, no way she's gonna let you not let us get better acquainted."

Kip's eyes go a little wider as he finishes speaking and Deeks rolls his eyes.

"She's right behind me, isn't she?" Deeks asks._ Of course she is. _

They're tucked into a back corner booth to keep Kip out of sight as much as possible and to allow Deeks an easy view of the rest of the room. Problem is, Kensi also has a preference for back corner booths, which means she probably saw them the minute she arrived.

"Yep." Kip pops his P as he grins at Kensi over Deeks' shoulder and Kensi's eyes widen at seeing the trait that's so typical of her partner on another man's lips.

"I was going to ask if you had rubbed off on him a little too much, Deeks, but now I'm wondering who rubbed off on who. Or maybe you're just really twins separated at birth."

It's true, their cocky attitudes and their speech patterns are oddly similar sometimes, but they have a long history together, one that's not all happy. They'd met, really, as freshmen in college, though they'd been familiar with the sight of each other for years. They'd grown up in the same neighborhood, same high school, opposite sides of neighborhood politics. But they'd been the only two to make it out and into college and they'd officially met in the dorm lounge the second week of freshman year. In the old neighborhood they'd been all but enemies, but there, in that new world where they were the only ones who knew where they'd come from, they became fast friends.

"What, uh, what are you doing here?"

"Nell and I were just having a little girls' night. She had to go take a call, so I thought I'd say hello."

Kensi grins and extends a hand.

"Since this one somehow forgot to actually introduce us earlier, I'm Kensi Blye."

"Badass Blye in the flesh." Kip grins at her and Deeks begins to think maybe this is a nightmare.

"Kip Brigham. But you already know that." He smiles flirtatiously and winks at her.

"So where exactly did you two meet?" she asks, making herself at home in the booth next to Deeks.

"College. We met in college." Deeks' answer is brief, hoping Nell's call will be short and she'll come take Kensi away before any real damage can be done. Kip has no filter.

"And you played basketball together," she prompts, obviously hoping Kip will expound.

"We met freshman year, I guess," Kip starts, and Kensi settles in for the story.

"I only ever played street ball before college. The kind with no rules and no referees. But Marty here, he liked to take his study breaks on the basketball court, and he made me play by the book. We started playing one-on-one for fun freshman year, and he convinced me to try out for the school team sophomore year. I had my last growth spurt between freshman and sophomore years and they decided to let me play. I redshirted for a year and then played four with the team. By the time I finally graduated and got drafted into the NBA, Marty here was halfway through law school, and he wasn't winnin' at one-on-one anymore."

Kensi's opening her mouth to ask another question, but mercifully Nell shows up and cuts her off. Deeks makes introductions around, silently blessing Nell for her appearance.

"Why don't you ladies both join us," Kip invites while Deeks mouths '_No. Do not do it. Stop.'_

Thankfully, Nell checks her watch.

"Sorry, we'd love to, but we're supposed to be meeting some other friends in a few minutes, so we should get going."

Deeks starts to breathe a sigh of relief as they say goodbye, but it catches in his throat as Kip speaks again, directing his attention to Kensi.

"You should join Marty and I for drinks this weekend. I'm sure we have a _lot_ in common." Kensi likes the conspiratorial twinkle in his eye and grins.

Deeks, silently fuming in his seat, breaks in.

"No, uh, no thanks. We have, uh, we have plans this weekend." He's having distinct trouble with his words this week, but Kip and Kensi together spells trouble for him.

Kensi smirks at him.

"No, we don't."

"Yes. Yes, we do. Remember that thing with Callen and Sam and that project? That thing."

She ignores him and turns to Kip.

"We have no plans, we'd love to."

Kip and Kensi ignore him while they make plans and Deeks isn't sure who he wants to shoot at the moment. They're both having way too much fun with this.

"See you Saturday. I'll meet you guys at 8." Kip tells Kensi as they say goodbye.

"No, like I said we have plans so…" he tries again, feebly, but it doesn't make any difference and Kensi is already halfway across the room with Nell.

Kip is grinning at him.

"I may not be all smitten like you, but your girl just told you that you're going out this weekend, I'm pretty sure that means you're going, whether you like it or not. Especially with that one. She is _bad._"

Bad is, apparently, Kip's favorite adjective to describe strong women.

"Yeah, I got that. Would you stop hitting on her?"

"I'm not hitting on her, I'm just h—"

"Helping. Yeah. I heard. Did you miss that whole conversation we _just _had?! You are _not _'helping'!"

"Come on, man. She is _fine, _and you've been mooning over her for like three years! Clearly, you need the help."

"Not mooning. I have not been mooning. And you are not helping."

"Dude, they're gonna take away your man card if you get much more moony-eyed over that girl."

* * *

"Oh, my gosh. We're hanging out with Kip Brigham tomorrow. I can't believe you didn't tell me you were _friends_ with him." Kensi sings the next morning as she enters the bullpen and plops her bag on her desk. Deeks is already at his; mercifully Sam and Callen are in the gym at the moment and not there to hear this.

"I didn't tell you because I was afraid you'd go all fangirl on me, which is exactly what you are doing."

"I'm not going all _fangirl_, I just admire his… talent." She smirks at him, "Plus, I'm really looking forward to hearing some interesting stories about my partner from someone who goes _way back_ with him."

"You know what? I don't think you guys are really going to get along. I don't think you'll have that much to talk about, so maybe we should just scrap the whole plan." It's a last-ditch effort that he knows is doomed to failure, but he tries anyway.

"Oh, I think we'll find _lots_ to talk about. He seems like the kind of guy who is just full of interesting information."

He throws himself forward and bangs his head on the desk, resigned. He's pretty sure the two of them are actually going to love each other, which, deep down, he's happy about. Kip might tease and flirt, but Deeks is confident enough in his relationship with Kensi and his friendship with Kip to not be threatened by that. Kip's one of his oldest friends and Kensi is, well, Kensi is his future. But still, that doesn't mean he needs his old friend telling his future how he's been _mooning _over her for three years. He does like to maintain _some _semblance of his masculinity, after all.

She's grinning wickedly at the top of his head, unfazed by his objections.

"I think we're going to get along just fine."

"Yeah," he grumbles against the desktop, "that's what I'm afraid of."

* * *

_AN: I was in the middle of working on something much angstier (don't worry, no one's dying) when I watched Reign Fall, and then this happened. Maybe my brain needed a break from the angst. _


	15. Both

_AN: I always feel so accomplished when I get TWO chapters out in one week._

* * *

Drinks on Saturday is the last thing that Deeks wants to do, but despite all his earnest prayers, no case comes up to keep them away.

He shows up at Kensi's to pick her up at quarter of eight, and she answers the door in her bathrobe.

"I don't know what to wear," she hisses at his puzzled look.

"I am completely fine with us just staying here and you wouldn't have to change at all, you can just wear that." He grins, appraising her from head to toe in the plush pink bathrobe. He has a sudden vision of Kensi and that robe, soft and warm, curled in his arms on the couch and it makes his heart skip a little.

"Deeks! Seriously, what do I wear?"

There's a flare of jealousy in his gut. He's pretty sure she doesn't stress over what to wear when it's just him that she's going for drinks with.

"What's wrong with what you had on earlier?" He asks patiently. He's in the same jeans he wore to the beach this afternoon, and the main reason he changed his shirt is because there was a tear in the sleeve from brushing up against the neighbor's ragged fence when he was walking Monty. To him, Kip is just Kip, but he's starting to wonder if maybe he should have thought more about his clothes for Kensi's sake. He hadn't realized he'd feel like he was competing against the basketball star for Kensi's attention.

Kensi is giving him that look that tells him he's not helping.

"We're going to be late!" She goes back to hissing at him.

"How is that my fault?! Besides, you're always late, why do you care? And Kip's always late anyway, so he'll never even know. Basically," he tosses his head to sweep the hair out of his eyes, "I'm the only one here who's ever on time."

"You're never on time either!" she hurls over her shoulder as she disappears back into her bedroom. When she comes out, she's in his favorite jeans, holding three shirts out in front of her. "Just help—which one?"

"That one," he says, pointing to the one that reminds him a little of the shirt he's wearing. It sends a message if they're matching, right?

What he really wants at the moment is to suggest is that she wear the LAPD t-shirt that he knows is hiding somewhere in her room, the one that disappeared from his bag a while back. _That_ would make a real statement. Also, he's been dying to see her in it ever since he figured out where it disappeared to. It's figured prominently in more than a few dreams. If that one's dirty, he's even willing to offer the one that's currently in his go-bag in the car, smelling like him and his cologne.

"Is this you _not_ fangirling all over him?" He yells after her as her bedroom door closes behind her again. She's back only a few seconds later in the shirt he'd picked. He's a little relieved to see that she looks normal—which is to say that she looks gorgeous, but not like she was trying extra hard to impress someone.

"I'm not fangirling."

At his skeptical look, she softens a little. "Ok, yes. I'm excited. I've been watching him play for years—he's one of my favorite players in the league. This is pretty cool. But also, he's my partner's best friend."

"_One _of my best friends," he corrects.

"Ok _one_ of my partner's best friends," she amends, "and that means he's important, and that means I want to make a good impression."

Before he can figure out how to respond to that, she flees back to her room to get her boots. When she comes back, the green eyed monster in his belly is significantly tamed, and his smile is warm. He's still worried about how this evening is going to go, but he can't help but feel a few warm fuzzies over her declaration.

* * *

When they arrive, the place is crowded and noisy. It's a mixed blessing; for Kip, more people means more distractions and less attention on him, but for Kensi and Deeks, the atmosphere affords too many variables for them to really completely relax, even on a night off. They're waiting at the counter for a chance to order when Kensi spies a waiter clearing and wiping down their favorite booth.

One hand unconsciously on Deeks' arm, she leans close in order to be heard above the hubbub.

"I'm going to go claim our table. Order for me?"

"Sure."

When he turns back to the bar, Kip is raising his eyebrows at him.

"What now?"

"_Our_ table? 'Order for me?'" he squeaks in an exaggerated high-pitched voice.

"From what you've told me, I didn't think she was one who just let her man order for her without supervision."

It's true, Kensi's a control freak, and the fact that she left him to order for her without leaving detailed instructions is a much bigger deal than he wanted Kip to know. It's also not unusual anymore, but this is the first time he's really thought about it.

A ridiculous bubble of pride swells in his chest because Kensi Blye trusts him to know her well enough to order for her.

"What you need, man, is—"

"Stop. Not helping, remember?"

"Come on, Marty. I may not be a super detective like you two, but I do know women, and—"

Deeks cuts him off again.

"No, you have to understand, what you know about all these other women doesn't mean squat when we're talking about Kensi." Deeks shakes his head: "You've been around her for a total of what, fifteen minutes now? I spent longer than that with her before breakfast this morning. Kensi is not like the women you hang out with. She's like Wonder Woman and Xena the Warrior Princess and the Mata Hari combined."

"But she is still a woman, and all women are basically the same, when you get down to it."

Deeks rolls his eyes and then his shoulders. "See, this is the reason that you're still single. You think one woman is interchangeable with another. Someday you're going to meet someone and realize you can't just swap her out for the next one when she gets fed up with your crap." Most of the time with Kip he pretends to be more annoyed about things than he really is. This time, there's a vein of very real irritation that comes out in his voice.

"Yeah, the only swapping you're going to be doing any time soon is trading in that Malibu for a minivan," Kip quips. "But for the record, you're still actually single, too. I'm the one that's trying to help remedy that."

Deeks just grunts, still annoyed.

"Relax, man. I didn't say she wasn't unique. I'm just saying that there are certain things that women like and don't like. And women don't like having to guess what you're thinking. I'm telling you, your girl over there is ready for you to make your move. You told me she's a control freak. I don't even know her, but that tells me that she's going to want you to show your hand before she's ready to play hers. So make your play, man."

* * *

An hour later, the evening is actually going much better than he had anticipated. There have been a few slightly embarrassing things come out, but some of them Kensi realizes she has actually heard before in the context of "my friend Kip" stories, back before she knew who _Kip_ was.

Kensi offers to go to the bar for the next round, and Deeks watches her go. They're his favorite jeans for a reason.

When he sees Kip's appreciative eye following her and lingering as she leans slightly on the counter while she waits, a low sound of disapproval rumbles from his throat.

Kip's head snaps over to look at him.

"Did you just _growl_ at me?"

Deeks just leans back and folds his arms.

"Why don't you keep your eyes over here."

Kip's snorts out a laugh loud enough to attract attention from several people around them. His grin is wide and delighted.

"Dude, you have got it _bad_."

* * *

_Damnit,_ he has to pee. Kensi's right, he must have a small bladder. He holds off as long as possible, thinking maybe it's a false alarm, but no such luck.

Finally, he excuses himself to use the men's room.

"Anybody else need to use the bathroom?" He asks hopefully. His primary goal for the night was to not leave the two of them alone together; no matter how well things are going, that just spells trouble.

Kensi rolls her eyes at him. "Some of us have normal-sized bladders, unlike you."

Kip makes a shooing motion, clearly not upset that he's leaving. "I'm good, man. Go do your thing."

He sighs and slips out of the booth, determined to be back as soon as possible. Except, _damnit_, there's a line for the men's room. _Really? When is there ever a freakin' line for the _men's_ room?_ But he's almost to the point of hopping from one foot to the other, so there's really no other option but to wait, giving Kip and Kensi _way_ too much time alone together.

* * *

When Deeks is out of earshot, Kip leans back in his seat and grins at Kensi, who in turn bites her lip almost shyly.

"So, when you gonna put my boy out of his misery?"

Kensi's eye pop open.

"Wha… What do you mean?"

Kip looks pointedly from her to the bathroom hallway and back again.

"Tell me you're not just as crazy about him as he is about you."

It's her turn to be chagrined. While she liked the potential to hear stories about Deeks and the things he might have said about her to his friend, she doesn't like the friend digging into her own story quite as much.

He sees that she's not inclined to speak at the moment, so he continues:

"Deeks told me you're a basketball fan, but you've hardly looked twice at me since we got here. Most of the time girls want to know _what's it like to play with the team _and _why did you decide to be a professional basketball player _and _do you think you could bench press me, _and crap like that. Did you know that basically everything you've talked about tonight has revolved around my man Marty?"

For the first time since meeting him, she's annoyed. She doesn't like being that readable.

"Just because a woman doesn't fall all over you doesn't mean she's in love with someone else."

"No, but when a woman looks at a guy like you look at Marty, every man with a brain knows that he might as well not even bother trying."

Her face remains impassive for several long beats and he raises his hands in defeat.

"Ok, ok. I give. Marty said you were pretty badass."

She softens a little bit at that and turns sly, leaning in and putting on her enticing interrogator face: "and what else has he said about me?"

"Didn't have to say much. You probably know that doesn't usually stop him, though. When he gets started, I can't get the dude to shut up. Sometimes a guy likes to brag on his girl."

Kip looks a little too innocent as he says it, and Kensi stumbles over what to say next.

"I'm not… we're not really…"

"You been his girl for a long time,_ Special Agent Blye," _Kip cuts in, "whether either of you admits it or not."

He can see that he's succeeded in making her uncomfortable, but he's accomplished his goal so he moves on quickly to less controversial territory.

"For real, though. How's he doing? He hasn't been around much the last few months."

Kensi feels a little guilty at that—he hasn't been around because he's basically either been at work or with her. She never even considered that she might be taking him away from other friends.

"How much do you…?" She's not entirely sure how to ask the question. If he has a limited knowledge about Deeks' real life, she doesn't want to imply that there's more to know. It seems, though, like he must know at least most of the story. Deeks certainly hadn't been worried about showing up at his house on official NCIS business.

"I've known Marty for more than half our lives. We haven't always been tight, but we kept in touch. I was there when he was working his way up through the force, and I was probably the only one on the outside close enough to notice when he started disappearin' for long times and then comin' back on edge."

He grins and winks at her as he continues:

"And then a few years ago, he mostly stopped disappearing, and he started talking 'bout you. He didn't tell me about NCIS, really, for a while. I think maybe he wasn't sure it would last. But he did eventually. I can be discreet when I need to be."

Kensi nods her acceptance.

"Last year…he kinda went off the radar for a while. Wasn't himself when he finally showed up again. I assume you know what was going on there."

It's not a question, but Kensi recognizes it as a gentle prod for information from a concerned friend.

"Yeah… things were rough for a few months, particularly for him. He's tough though." She can't disguise the affection and respect in her voice, and for once she decides to not even try.

"But he's good now? He's been scarce for the last year, but he seems more like himself."

"Yeah, that's probably my fault. Things were tough for both of us for a while, but I think we're doing pretty good now." She's treading two lines she's uncomfortable with, so she keeps it short: she doesn't like sharing her own struggles, and she doesn't want to share more about Deeks' life than he would want her to, even with a friend.

Kip waggles his eyebrows playfully at her: "Just to clarify—it's your fault that he's doing good now, or that he hasn't been around lately? Cuz I'm not sure which one..."

Kensi blushes slightly.

"Shut up."

That's when Deeks reappears at the end of the booth, looking suspiciously from one of them to the other.

"What, uh, what are we talking about here?" he asks, scratching his beard nervously.

Kensi blushes harder, though she's not exactly sure why.

"Nothing, beach boy, just sit down."

When Deeks sits, Kip can't help but notice that she scoots a fraction of an inch closer to him than she was before.

_Mission accomplished._

* * *

"Could we, uh, maybe walk for a few minutes or something?"

They're pulled up in her driveway at the end of the evening and she's stepping out of her car when he blurts the question out hurriedly.

She looks at him oddly, but turns down the driveway and waits for him by the back of his car.

They pass her house, and her neighbor's house, and the dog two doors down goes hoarse barking at them before either of them speaks. Finally, she breaks the silence.

"Kip says I'm your girl."

"Yeah, Kip seems to have tendency of sharing things that weren't really meant to be shared."

"I'm okay with that."

Deeks stops walking and his hand on her elbow draws her to a stop beside him.

"Just to clarify," he starts, scrubbing one hand across the back of his neck and nervously looking around, "you're okay with Kip oversharing, or you're okay with being my girl?"

Nudging his shoulder with hers and smiling, she starts walking again, turning back in the direction of her house. He stands, unmoving, for a minute, and she has to turn her head back to watch him as she answers.

"Both."

* * *

_AN: I really had no plans to continue chapter 14, but several of you asked for it, and there were a few bits in my head that decided they wanted to be written. I watched the Kip scene in "Reign Fall" many, many (many) times while writing this, trying to get the voices right. I'm still not thrilled with the result, but it's done. I'd love to hear what you think._

_Like several of you said in your reviews, I thought Kip had a lot of interesting potential for pushing things along with Kensi and Deeks—I wish we had gotten to see a little more of that in the episode._

_After twice as many chapters and almost twice as many words and reviews, I just saw that this collection has finally accumulated more favorites and follows than my old story, _In Due Time. _Thanks so much for reading! It really makes my day to look in and see that people are reading and liking my work. __  
_


	16. Man's Best Friend

Man's Best Friend.

_AN: This is not a happy, fluffy Monty piece._

* * *

His shoulders heave once and then a shudder passes through his body. She presses her face into his shoulder and tightens her arms around him, trying to will strength into him even as tears stream from her own swollen eyes.

Squished between them, three year old Ellie presses her face to her father's, one tiny hand on each cheek.

"Daddy, where's Monty?"

"He's gone, baby." Comes Deeks' muffled voice, face buried in his daughter's neck, inhaling her sweet innocent scent.

"Like he was gone lasterday?" She queries, referring to Monty's last trip to the vet. "And he will be back later?"

"No baby, Monty's not coming back this time. He's gone somewhere where he can run and play and not be tired or sick anymore."

Tears well in her brown eyes, spilling over red cheeks and plastering feathery blond curls to her face.

"But didn't he want to stay wiss us?" She asks again.

"I'm sure he did, Ellie-girl. But he was so tired, he needed the rest. But he loved us very much."

"I know," is her bright response, eyes still wet with tears.

It is both easier and harder for a three-year-old. She has known him her whole life, but her memory is short and her understanding is shallow. Tomorrow she will wonder where her sidekick and guardian is and will have to be told again; she will grieve, in her toddler way, all over again. But, in a few weeks the memory will be fuzzy, she will remember snippets of him, but she will stop noticing he is missing.

It's different for Deeks. Before NCIS, before Kensi, before Ellie, before the baby just beginning to grow in Kensi's womb, before all of that, all there was was Monty. The grief is deeper, wider, longer. Healing won't be a matter of days or weeks, it's a whole life change. It's a hole left gaping in the family they've built.

Sam offered the corner of his backyard flower garden for a final resting place. It's probably against at least half a dozen city ordinances and codes, but they all choose to ignore that as they lower the box into the hole that Sam dug for their faithful friend.

Sam's standing a few yards off, giving the little family space as they say goodbye. As Ellie begins to squirm, he steps up and offers his arms. Deeks passes her into them and Kensi stretches to kiss the damp cheek as she moves easily into Sam's arms.

"Why don't you go say hi to Aunt Michelle, baby. I'm sure she would like to hear about your friend Robert."

Immediately, Elile's face brightens as she tells Uncle Sam about her "boyfriend" at daycare, voice trailing off into the distance as they move into the house.

Arms now empty, Deeks reaches down to the bag they brought with them and tosses two favorite toys and and old tee shirt of his own in the hole on top of the box.

Deeks' shoulders heave again, once, and then again and again in a series of choked sobs as Kensi moves back into his arms, tucking her face into his neck and winding her arms around his waist and up under his tee-shirt, skin on warm skin. They stand there for long minutes, shoulders shaking together, tears running freely.

Eventually, Deeks pulls back and picks up the shovel. Carefully, shovelful by shovelful, he tamps the dirt back in around the box until all that's left is a bare patch in the otherwise well-manicured bed of flowers.

Finished, he stands again, drawn back to his wife's side. Running his hands up the sides of her face, he wriggles his fingers into the hair at her temples and draws her close, pressing his lips to her forehead in a lingering kiss.

Her own fingers reach up to tangle in his hair and hold him there.

When she speaks, it's still not without tears.

"You gave him a good life, and a good end."

Dropping a hand to her barely swollen belly he presses his face into her hair and inhales the comfort that always comes in her arms.

"_We _gave him a good life."

"And he loved us very much," she repeats the words he'd said earlier to Ellie as his arms trail back around her and one hand finds hers. There are still hitches in his breath, but his shoulders are straightening and his grip of their hands is gentle instead of desperate.

"Yeah. He did."

* * *

_AN2: Sorry, sorry, sorry! I genuinely wish I hadn't needed to write this, but my brother's dog was hit by a car last night and didn't make it. My brother is a US Marine: a man of action, but of few words and fewer emotions. Last night, burying his first dog, his best friend, his fishing companion, his daughters' best friend and guardian, pulled tears from him that I have not seen in many years. They spent many days at my house, running sprints around the yard and playing fetch and chase with my own beloved dog, and many weekends with our families at the lake, swimming circles around all of us and teaching my reluctant baby to love the water. This was the only way I knew how to pay tribute to our friend. He will be sorely missed. _


	17. A Million More

"So this means I get to call you my girlfriend now, right?" There's a grin plastered to his face as he looks down at her, questioning, as they turn to head to the car after turning their skates back in. He's thirty-five years old and he feels like he's thirteen again, giddy from spending the last two hours holing his crush's hand.

Her answering smile is almost shy.

"Yes. That's what this means." She swings their joined hands up in front of them to indicate what _this_ means.

"And I can kiss you whenever I want?" His tone is hopeful and she laughs.

"Hmmmm" she hums. "Within reason."

He looks affronted.

"Since when does reason have anything to do with making out?"

A fist lands on his shoulder that he thinks was meant to be a punch, but it doesn't carry any weight and he just leans into it. The fist opens to become a hand wrapped around his bicep. So worth the hit.

"Just don't get us fired," she relents.

For a moment, he pretends to debate the merits of making out in the bullpen versus keeping his job. It's apparently not quite as easy a decision as one would expect.

"Deal."

"Good."

"And I can tell Kip to stop hitting on you?"

She looks up at him skeptically.

"Did you not do that already?"

"Okay, well, yeah, but..."

She just laughs, pulling at him with the hand on his arm to move them toward the car.

Standing fast, he reaches for her free hand and pulls her back to him, using her momentum to swing her back into his arms.

He loves everything about this. He loves the way her smile turns shy and her lip catches in her teeth as his face draws near. He loves the way the tips of his fingers tangle in her dark curls and he loves the soft line of her jaw under his palms. He loves that he knows every curve of her face and expression of her lips so completely and yet it all still feels so bright and new. He loves the hitch in her breathing and the way she leans in to meet him, unafraid.

There's an interminable length of time when he's not conscious of anything that's not her lips on his or the line of her back under his hands. When he pulls back and rests his forehead on hers, he grins as he becomes aware that her other hand has found a grip on his other bicep and her thumbs are slowly stroking back and forth over the rough fabric of his jacket.

"You really like my biceps today, huh? I can't blame you, they're impressive."

One hand leaves his bicep and then swings back toward it in a fist. He just catches it in his hand and wiggles his fingers in between hers, turning toward back toward the car, playfully swinging their hands between them.

He's not worried anymore about losing the moments. They've got a lifetime of them ahead of them, and he loves the moments when her eyes are sparking dangerously at him as much as the ones when they're looking up at him tenderly. Well, almost as much anyway.

He's looking forward to a million of each

* * *

_AN: I know there have been a million tags to Humbug already, but I just couldn't resist, and **ToOldToShip **said I owed you something happy after that last chapter.  
_

_I finished this on my phone last night while my computer was away being updated. When I got my computer back today, I discovered that somehow those edits didn't save. I know I liked the ending I wrote last night much better, unfortunately I can't remember why or what it was... _


	18. Balance

_AN: Just a little snippet set a couple months after _Humbug.

* * *

"Are you okay?"

The question strikes her as odd because she's so much more than just okay that it's almost not even on the same scale.

She woke up smiling this morning, she giggled at Deeks' morning text message, and she walked into the bullpen suppressing a grin. She's been biting her lip all morning trying not to smile as she peeks over at Deeks' desk_. _It's like suddenly she's fourteen again, and she _likes_ it.

Now Deeks is on the lunch run and Sam is in the gym and Callen is asking if she's _okay._

She sends him a puzzled look.

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"You just don't seem... like you today. You've been different lately."

If she doesn't seem like normal self today, it's probably because she's not sure her feet have touched the ground yet. Marty Deeks told her he loved her last night and she hadn't even hesitated when she said it back. It hasn't always been that easy; the beginning was understandably challenging as they went through the awkward stage of figuring out how exactly to transition into a healthy relationship and what exactly good communication habits looked like for them. It had been a good stage, but not always an easy one. Now, they're on to what she thinks of as the real first honeymoon stage. The one where they're settled in and stable but still giddy and awestruck and crazy about each other. So, she's not her old self today, but she thinks maybe she's her better self. It's hard to tell if Callen sees it as an improvement.

"In a bad way?"

"No, just... different."

"Well, I'm not _okay._" She tells him. "I'm not _okay, _and I'm not _fine_, but I am _good, _and I am _happy_, if that matters."

He softens a little. "Of course it matters. Look, I know that you and Deeks... I know things have changed. And you're different now, and I just wanted to be sure that this isn't going to change things around here."

She understands his concern for his team, and she appreciates his concern for her as his friend, but she can't help but feel like it's a little bit misplaced. It feels like he's been looking at them with a slightly disapproving air for weeks and she's tired of it.

"I'm tired of feeling like just because I'm the big bad federal agent I'm not allowed to have the giddy, cheesy, happy stage of falling in love." Her tone pleads with him to understand. "I'm tired of people thinking something is _wrong_ when I smile too much. I'm tired of never getting to have a normal life and a normal family because I'm too busy getting shot at. I chose this life. I want this life. But I want _more_ than just this life. And for the first time in my life, I feel like I have that. I'm falling in love with my best friend, and he's falling in love with me, and we don't have to lie to each other. He makes me giggle, Callen. _I _didn't know I giggled. I'm better with him, and I think maybe he's better with me. So things probably won't be exactly the same around here, but if we make each other better, then we make this team better, too."

There is a long beat of silence, and then he gives her a slight nod accompanied by a ghost of a smile, and she knows he gets it. In many ways she and Callen are alike. They are the serious ones, the loners by choice, the ones longing for a family but wary of the vulnerability that comes with relationships. They've found a family here at OSP and she knows that he's leery of anything that might upset the balance of that family circle. She understands that, but she's finally found what they've both been looking for. She found the one who makes the future more important than the past, who will be her laughter and her companion and her family.

Footsteps sound from around the corner and Deeks appears, balancing a tower of styrofoam containers. His blonde hair is windblown and he tosses it back out of his eyes as he struggles to keep the top container from sliding to the floor. Something in her warms and her shoulders straighten slightly, as if his very presence makes her stronger.

"You'll never guess what I discovered for lunch today," he beams.

Callen groans.

"Please, no. How many times do you have to do this to us? Name one time this has worked out well."

Kensi looks skeptically at the container Deeks places in her hands. She can actually think of a few times his food adventures have turned out extremely well, but there have definitely been a few that missed the mark. Snagging the bottle of iced tea she knows is his, she uncaps it and takes a long drink as he and Callen bicker about Deeks' past lunch failures. As she sets it back on his desk, he narrows his eyes at her and playfully swats her hand away. The hand that swatted hers follows it down at catches three of her fingers for a quick squeeze and she presses back a smile. Not everything has changed, but somehow everything is different.

Across from them, Callen groans again.

"Please, no. Can you please not look at each other like that while we're trying to work."

Deeks grins at him and then gives her an exaggerated look of tenderness.

"Technically, we are on lunch right now, so we're not trying to work."

"Sam dog!" Callen yells as he hears his partner approaching from behind. "Back me up here. Tell them not to make the goo-goo eyes at work."

Sam sighs and rolls his eyes good naturedly and repeats: "Don't make the goo-goo eyes at work."

"Fine then," Deeks grins glibly as he snatches her hand with one of his and their lunches in the other. "We'll take our lunch outside and make goo-goo eyes outside so you old farts don't have to be jealous."

She doesn't protest as he nods for her to grab their drinks and then tugs her by the hand toward the door.

Kensi rocks her shoulder in to nudge his and smiles when he glances down at her. Behind them, Callen and Sam call out good natured objections through suppressed smiles. They're not the same, but they haven't upset the balance either.

They're stronger together.

* * *

_AN: I've been feeling a need to write something more substantial than these little shots I've been posting. I haven't written anything significant since finishing _In Due Time_, and my fingers have been itching for something bigger. I had a new multi-chapter piece just about ready to post, but after _Humbug_ I just didn't have the heart to write angst for a while, so it's been sitting almost finished for a couple weeks. _

_I haven't settled on a name for it yet, but keep your eyes out for the first chapter, which should be out within the next week. Reviews may shorten the time it takes to finish it. :) _


	19. Proud

_AN: I was working on _Crumble, _and this popped into my head and demanded to be written. So, here's a little break from the angst while I finish the next chapter. The next chapter of _Crumble _should hopefully be up by Monday, but reviews make that even more likely. :) _

* * *

"You know you don't have to... if you don't want to take my name—"

"I want to." She cuts him off.

He's started at the immediacy of her answer and cocks his head curiously to the side.

"You do?"

"I do." She smiles as she hears the unconscious parody of their future vows.

"I just thought maybe you'd want to keep yours, you know, because of your dad and..."

His voice trails off. She's so fiercely independent, so strong and sure. He'd thought maybe it was one of those things she'd think was chauvinistic and outdated. And her father had meant so much to her, had been the center of so much of her life, he always just assumed she might want to keep his name.

His surprise must show on his face.

"I loved my dad. And for almost thirty years I have been honored to carry his name. I've been proud of what that name stood for and what he made of it, and I wanted to carry on that legacy, to keep the Blye name one to be proud of. It was the name of a man I was proud to have in my life, so it was a name I was proud to carry."

She reaches across to twine her fingers with his.

"And that's the same reason that I want to take your name."

His heart races at the implications of that statement. He knows, of course, that she loves him. She did agree to marry him, after all. He knows that she thinks he is a good man. He knows she trusts his skill to back her up in and out of the field.

It's something else entirely to hear that she is _proud _of him. He jokes and he smarts off, but he's not entirely sure that he's ever actually had someone tell him they were proud of him. Looking down at the dark-eyed woman who has promised to share his life and his name, he stands just a little taller.

"I am proud to be a Blye. And I will be proud to be a Deeks, because you made that name something to be proud of. My father will be a part of the legacy I leave no matter what name I carry, and I think he would be proud to see it tied to yours. Ours."

Her words are a balm to old wounds. He honestly wouldn't have minded if she had wanted to keep her last name; the fact that she's promised to share her life with him is more than enough for him. Still, her declaration touches and heals places long forgotten in his heart. She's _proud_ of him. Proud enough to want to carry his name.

Drawing her into his arms, he presses his face into her hair, lips just behind her ear.

"Kensi Deeks," he murmurs softly. A tender smile twitches across his lips, hidden in her hair.

"I really like the sound of that."


	20. High

It's a vicious kick to the knee by the boot of a surly suspect that ends with them hobbling painfully to the emergency room this time.

Actually, given all the host of other reasons they could have ended up at the hospital, he's pretty okay with it being this one. Not that he's okay with her being hurt, not by a long shot, but the doctor is pleasant and unconcerned and explains that her injury is basically the equivalent of what is a very common injury for athletes, and the surgery they'd be doing is a routine outpatient procedure. There will still be a significant recovery period while she heals, but the pain should be minimal and lasting trouble is unlikely. Although it's not even a particularly urgent injury, given the amount of pain it's causing they'll schedule her to be in for surgery first thing in the morning.

For that reason, he spends a fairly relaxed couple of hours in the waiting room the next morning, reading surfing magazines while he waits for her to come out of surgery. Kensi's been grouchy ever since leaving the hospital because she wasn't allowed to eat before the surgery, so the waiting room actually feels kind of peaceful.

By the time that the nurse comes to escort him back to the recovery area, he is informed that she's already awake and everything looks good. The nurse points him to her bed before continuing on her rounds.

He grins as he sees her watching him approach.

"Hi Princess. How are—?"

He doesn't have a chance to finish his question before she sits up straight and blurts, "Deeks has blue eyeballs!"

"Why yes. Yes, he does."

She's sitting up in the hospital bed, wide-eyed and curious, like a child, as he sits down on the edge of her bed, facing her. Suddenly startled, she slaps her hands down on the sheets covering her and starts frantically searching for something.

"What are you looking for?"

"Where's Fred?"

It's his turn to be curious

"Who's Fred?"

"Fred is a walrus. Did Billy eat Fred?"

This is getting crazier by the minute. Just then the doctor passes by the window and Deeks races to stick his head out the door. He's pretty sure this is just the meds talking, but he's so used to Kensi being thoroughly in control of every part of herself that he just almost can't believe that the meds they have her on could make her so loopy.

"Doc—quick question. She's awake and she… she doesn't sound like herself. Is that normal?"

The doctor laughs.

"Completely normal. The combination of the anesthetic from her surgery and the pain meds we've put her on have the tendency to make people pretty ridiculous for a while. It should wear off in a few hours, and the pain meds she'll be on after today will have much less effect on personality. Everything went fine, and she should be discharged later this afternoon."

He grins and winks at Deeks.

"Meanwhile, I recommend having your video camera ready for the next little while. It can get pretty memorable."

With that fear allayed, he slips back into the room, closing the door behind him.

"Did you find Billy?" She queries as she sees him return

"Who's Billy?"

"Billy is my pet frog. Did he eat Fred?"

"I'm sorry, what?" He asks, twisting his head to the side and squinting, trying to picture Billy-the-frog eating Fred-the-walrus. Whatever they've got her on post-op, it's got to be something good.

Still, she looks so earnest and concerned that he can't even bring himself to laugh, though he's dying to.

Suddenly her face turns horrified.

"Did you let Monty eat them?"

"Monty didn't eat anyone, Sunshine. You know how picky he is about his food. He's on a walrus-free diet. They're probably just lost under the piles of junk all over your apartment. I'm pretty sure you'd be able to hide a walrus in there without me ever knowing."

He's suppressing his laughter, about to reach for his phone to record this so he has video evidence of whatever comes next when Sam enters the room, followed by Callen.

"Deeks is pregnant!" She announces loudly as she sees her visitors.

He lets out a snort of laughter.

"I am, huh?" He asks, thrusting his stomach out as far as he can to try to create a belly.

"Is it a boy or a girl?"

"Both!"

She laughs, a full, hearty, maniacal laugh.

"And how does that work?" He asks, not really expecting a logical answer at this point.

"It's twins!"

Two pairs of amused eyes find his and he just shrugs and grins cheekily.

"Doc said it should only last a couple of hours. Might as well make the most of it."

* * *

Callen and Sam don't stay long, and he's settling back into the chair by her bed when she drops the next bombshell.

"I love you!"

Now that's one statement he really wishes she were coherent for. They're being bold, but they haven't said that yet. But, since he's pretty sure he's not pregnant, and he highly doubts that she has a walrus-eating pet frog, he's not going to hold her to this one, either.

"Don't you love me back?"

He's not entirely sure that he wants to say it to her for the first time while she's high on pain meds, so he's not quite sure how to answer that question. In the end, he doesn't have to; she just keeps rambling on.

"I think you do. I think you love me back."

"And why do you think that?" He's really actually interested in knowing the answer. If high Kensi knows that he loves her, it means that sober Kensi does, too. If sober Kensi knows he loves her even without him saying it, then it must mean he's doing something right in this relationship.

Her eyes squint as she focuses intently on searching for an answer.

"You're… kinda squishy with me. Soft and squishy."

He's not sure _squishy_ is a compliment in the real world but, in whatever universe she's in at the moment, it seems to make her happy, so he's willing to go with it. He assumes it's supposed to translate to something roughly akin to _tender. _

"I'm glad you know that I do. But you're not going to remember any of this tomorrow, so we can have this conversation another time, okay? When you'll actually remember it."

He settles back in his chair and watches as her eyelids drift closed.

If Kensi on pain meds is ready for him to declare his love for her, then maybe normal Kensi is almost ready, too.

He'll wait.

* * *

_AN: In my mind, this takes place somewhere right about now: after Humbug, but not too long after. One of my sisters-in-law had surgery a while back; most of this is a direct transcript of the conversation she had with my brother while coming out of the anesthetic._

_I'd love it if you'd leave a review on your way out. I'm lacking inspiration lately, so if you have suggestions, I'm open to hearing them._


	21. Return

Kensi enters the mission with her hands raised high in victory.

"It's done!" She calls happily to the little bunch that's waiting for her in the bullpen. There are three familiar faces and one she doesn't recognize in the little circle, but there's really only one she cares about seeing right now.

Still, they're her team and they deserve to at least be acknowledged. And she supposes she'll have to be polite and meet the new guy, too, before they can escape.

It's quiet in the Office of Special Projects. The tail end of the sunset is filtering through the high windows and most of the other staff has already gone home for the night.

Callen makes introductions as she arrives, gesturing to a tall, moderately attractive man in a dark suit that stands across from him.

"FBI agent Tim Anderson, Special Agent Kensi Blye. Anderson's been here liaising with us on behalf of the FBI's interest in this op for the last couple days."

Kensi's been undercover for four days and, while four days is not really all that long, right now it feels like a lifetime.

She reaches to shake his hand and his smile seems a little overly friendly, but she's not paying enough attention to him to care.

"Very impressive, Kensi." Yep. He holds her hand a moment after she lets go and his roaming eyes tell her that he definitely wasn't just talking about her undercover work. His easy familiarly with her first name makes her want to roll her eyes.

Instead, she turns to Callen and Sam and accepts their brief hugs. When she reaches Deeks, she simply stops in front of him, smiling up at him for a few seconds before falling into his arms.

His arms come around her as hers snake around his waist and his lips find her forehead, then her temple, then her jawline. By the time he reaches her lips she's so impatient that she's about to smack him if he doesn't kiss her soon. His lips find hers once, softly, and then again more insistently as they lose consciousness of where they are.

A stupefied Agent Anderson is awkwardly watching the blatant public display of affection. His eyes swing back and forth from the shaggy, irreverent, unkempt detective to the gorgeous, intelligent agent melting into his body. He's clearly having trouble accepting the obvious connection.

"Is he allowed to do that?" He ventures as he turns away, confused.

Callen slaps a hand on his shoulder with an unsympathetic smile.

"You get used to it, eventually." His voice is a little louder than usual, clearly trying to break into their fog.

Deeks draws his head up with one more light kiss to her lips, but doesn't loosen the circle of his arms. When he lifts his eyes to the rest of them, his expression is a little bit annoyed as he gives Callen a mock glare.

"Okay, first, we are off the clock now, so I'm allowed to do whatever I want. Secondly, when was the last time I kissed her in front of you?"

"Three weeks ago," Callen answers immediately.

Deeks rolls his eyes incredulously.

"That was our wedding! It's_ literally_ required. The man told me to do it," he says, grinning widely.

"And all those other times after that?"

"Hey, I remember you and Sam being right there with everyone else dinging your glasses. You can't complain when you asked for it."

Deeks is pretty sure Nell hadn't put down her silverware all night, she'd spent so much time dinging her champagne glass with them. Sam and Callen had been a little more restrained, but he'd still seen them joining in plenty. Not that he's complaining.

"Like you needed any encouragement in that department," Sam mumbles under his breath.

Deeks can feel Kensi grin into his chest before she turns out to face the rest of the group, keeping the back of one shoulder pressed into his.

Deeks turns a smug smile to Tim Anderson. The agent's always been a little too self-important for his tastes, and he got the constant feeling that the well-dressed agent was looking down on him. It feels good to see the dumbfounded look on his face.

"Anderson, I'd like you to meet my wife, Kensi Blye _Deeks_."

He's not sure if anyone else can see it, but he can feel the change in her as she switches over from "Agent Blye" mode into "Mrs. Deeks" mode, as he has dubbed them. Mrs. Deeks mode is just as stubborn and strong as Agent Blye mode, but it's softer and more open, more touchy feely.

"Now, if you'll excuse us," he says, wrapping an arm around her waist, "I haven't seen my wife in four days, and I'm going to take her home and m—"

"TOO much information." Callen cuts him off. "Just go home. We'll see you Monday."

"Monday?" Deeks' head snaps up to look at him. "It's only Thursday."

"Hetty says take the long weekend. Come back on Monday."

"Deal," Kensi says, already grabbing Deeks' arm and pulling him toward the door, hurrying as if afraid that someone is going to change their mind or Eric is going to show up at the top of the stairs with a whistle.

"Drinks tomorrow night!" Callen calls after them as they pass through the door.

"Got it!" Deeks' muffled voice rings back from where they've disappeared through the doorway.

Anderson is still looking bewildered when Sam slaps a hand on Anderson's shoulder with a little more pressure than might be considered particularly friendly.

"Sometimes, you shouldn't judge a book by its cover."

* * *

_AN: This was originally supposed to be a companion to chapter 13, "Say It," but it developed into something different. I think there'll still be a companion to "Say It" coming up soon. _

_Thanks so much to all of you who have left reviews on here, particularly those of you who have been so sweet to leave reviews regularly as I post. I know there are more of you than I can list here, but EmmyLou74, Hoosier65, anonkp, blue dogs rock, Divergent338, raccoonsmate4life, conservativegirl, fanficforyou, violetdoodlebug, Jammies13, Joy, mocha mocha doll, RhondaLara and many more of you have been a huge encouragement as you leave reviews on so many of the chapters that I write. Thanks a million for your time and your notes._


	22. Taken

"Hi, can you tell me where the best place to get a drink here is?"

His eyes slowly drift open to find a leggy blonde in a bikini standing over him. He's been drifting between reading and dozing in a lounge chair on a stretch of beach at a resort in Australia and it takes a moment to get his bearings again. He looks confusedly at the empty space next to him in the wide chair.

"Yeah, uh, I think the little cabana up there," he nods at a little open-sided shelter further up shore, "is pretty popular. Seemed nice to me."

"You have a favorite?"

His brain is still not entirely awake and the warm sun is keeping him in a state of lazy contentment, so it takes a moment's processing before he realizes that she's actually flirting with him and not just asking for directions.

"Yeah, no, not really. I'm just a basic beer kind of guy."

He squints to force his eyes to wake up and tosses the fringe of his bangs out of his face. He's pretty sure there was a time when he would have found this flattering, enticing even. He thinks there was probably a time when she was exactly his type.

Now, he just finds it annoying. Also, he's a little irritated at being woken up from his much-needed nap.

"Well, maybe you want to buy me a drink?" She encourages.

Does she think he's shy? He's never been being accused of being shy before.

He tries looking pointedly down at his ring finger, clearly displayed laying on top of the book that he had been reading, but either she doesn't notice or it doesn't deter her.

"I think I'm comfortable here, thanks."

Maybe he should try moving his hand so the gold band catches the light better? It does glow in the sunlight pretty nicely. He's spent his fair share of the last day and a half just turning his hand this way and that, mesmerized by the way the light glints off the warm metal of the simple band.

He'd been terrified the first day here of swimming and surfing with it on, afraid that the water would somehow catch and pull it off, but it's still safely on his hand. The weight and shape of it is only just beginning to feel familiar on his finger, but he's kind of ridiculously attached to the crazy little thing already.

"Then maybe I could bring you one."

Geez. She just doesn't take hints well, does she? He thought that was supposed to be a masculine trait.

He lifts his left hand to comb his hair away from his forehead.

"Uh, no. No thanks. My w—"

Long, slender fingers stop his words as they comb through his hair from behind and meet his, lacing their fingers and dropping their joined hands onto his shoulder. He shivers as her thumb moves in slow circles over the back of his neck.

He doesn't need to look back to see who it is. He knows the fingers laced with his. He knows without looking that there's a matching gold band and an understated diamond on the finger next to his.

He smirks at the blond still standing in front of him.

"I think I'll pass, thanks."

"Did you need something from my husband?"

Deeks shivers a little again as the word falls from her lips. _Husband. _He's her husband now, and she's his _wife. _The word tickles little cells of happiness in his brain. It's official, permanent. They belong to each other for real now.

The blonde takes an involuntary step back and mumbles something negative as she turns to go.

He turns and squints up at Kensi as she moves around to the front.

"You're kind of scary." He grins at her. "It's kind of hot."

"I can't leave you alone for five minutes," she grunts as she settles back into her place beside him in the wide lounger.

"Where did you go?" He grumbles, turning his body into hers to mumble into the skin of her neck, leaving a small kiss just above her collarbone.

His arms slides over her and draws her closer to him as he trails a line of warm kisses up her neck and down her jawline. His lips have just found hers and his hand is trailing around her waist and under the fabric in the back of her dress when she sighs.

"Deeks. Public beach."

He grunts, but pulls back slightly.

"It's our honeymoon, we're supposed to make out in inappropriate places and display our affection very publicly. That's what you do on your honeymoon. It's practically our responsibility to make other people jealous and uncomfortable."

She laughs, a light, happy little sound, and pushes him back to his own side of the chair.

"Fine." He sighs dramatically. "Where did you say you went?"

"I had to pee. And we were out of water."

She reaches across him to put something slushy and fruity into his cup holder and tosses two water bottles to the sand beside them.

"I can't leave my husband alone for long enough to buy a bottle of water without some bimbo hitting on him." She complains as she settles back down and closes her eyes.

His eyes take a long, lazy journey down her body: long legs and tan skin and curves wrapped in a flowy cover-up dress that for some reason he's a huge fan of.

"You're telling me no one hit on you while you were gone?"

She's silent for a beat.

"That's not the point."

"So what is the point, Wifey? At least you got here to save me."

"You're _my _husband."

His heart smiles at the possessiveness in her tone. Darn right he is. All hers. And she's all his.

"And that means you're the only one who gets to hit on me, right?"

"If you don't shut up I might just plain hit you, Husband."

He grins widely, leaning up so his face is hovering over hers.

"You really like that word, don't you?"

Opening one eye to look at him, she blushes a little and he thinks it's possibly the most adorable thing he's ever seen.

"I haven't really had a chance to say it yet. I'm testing it out."

"And you looove it," he teases.

She tries and fails to suppress a smile.

"I do, actually."

He leans down and finds her lips with his again, smiling against them.

"I do, too, Wife."

* * *

_AN: I read the Divergent Trilogy over the last couple of weeks, and they stole all my inspiration for a while. Mostly Tobias stole all my inspiration... _

_I have mostly recovered and am back to NCIS:LA now. This is a companion to chapter 13, "Say It." I've got a couple of tags to "Black Wind" in process that should be out fairly soon. You know the drill; reviews really do make me write faster. :) _


	23. White

She forgets sometimes how much she loves him in plain white tee shirts.

She also loves him in blue. And in that black button-down. And… she probably ought to admit one of these days that she just plain loves him, but there really is something about the white tee shirts that makes her thoughts a little fuzzier.

It's funny, she thinks of him as being fairly slender most of the time—compactly muscled rather than bulky like Sam, but the white tee shirt challenges that perception. They make his chest seem broader and his biceps bigger, and she can see the way his body moves under it all day long. Something about it reminds her that his chest is warm and his arms are strong and that spot in his neck where her nose lands smells like home. It's one of those odd little things she shouldn't even notice, something that had never even occurred to her with anyone else, but her nose fits just perfectly in that hollow of his throat when she's tucked into him.

The white tee shirts remind her of the way his body can surround hers and block out the rest of the world.

* * *

When they wander into his living room at the end of the day and drop their bags onto the floor, he reaches for her and she goes into his arms without resistance.

Those arms wrap around her and she tucks her face into his chest and the stress of the day begins to melt out of them as they sway gently back and forth in the middle of the living room floor. She can feel the tension easing out of him as he relives the end of the day—finding out he made a promise he wouldn't be allowed to keep, futilely searching for other alternatives, failing and feeling the weight of lives in his hands, hearing Granger's news and finally relaxing. He goes through the whole cycle again as she smoothes her hand over and over his back.

"Even if Granger hadn't been able to work it all out," she murmurs, planting her chin on his clavicle and tipping her head up to look him in the eye, "you'd still be one of the good guys."

He pulls away, turning away from her and rolling his head back in disbelief.

"How can you say that, Kensi? If Granger hadn't saved the day, a little boy would probably be dead because I couldn't keep a promise that I made to him."

"And that would be terrible. And you wouldn't be one of the good guys, you wouldn't be _my _Deeks, if that didn't bother you. But, Deeks, where do you think he would have ended up if we hadn't got there? If you hadn't made that promise to him in the first place?"

He just grunts and turns to flop down on the couch.

"May I remind you of the bad guys with guns who were there to run them down just seconds after we got there? The ones we barely got them away from?"

She sits next to him, sideways so she can look directly at him, her knees pressed into his thigh.

"My point is, Deeks, they would have been dead already this morning if you hadn't made that promise to him. You didn't let him down; you saved his life. You gave him hope. You gave them a chance. That's more than they had when we found them."

She reaches one hand out to lace her fingers with his and relaxes a little when she feels him press his hand to hers, even though he still refuses to look at her.

"Maybe you weren't allowed to keep your promise exactly how you intended, but we made the best call we could in the circumstances. That's all we can do. That's all we can ever do. You're not responsible for the actions of the entire justice system. You can't do everything by yourself. We're a team, even Granger, and that means sometimes one person picks up where another is forced to leave off. In this case, Granger had the influence to make things right where we didn't. We're a team; that's how a team works. Everybody has a part to play. But Granger wouldn't have even had the chance to play his part if we hadn't rescued them and got them here first. Maybe it's not exactly the way we expected it to happen, but this is still a win, Deeks."

"Damnit, now I owe him," he grumbles. "I don't want to owe Granger, that's just bad news."

When he meets her gaze, his blue eyes are a little glassy and a little joking and a lot grateful.

"But there are worse things in the world."

Leaning his head back against the couch, he gazes at her tenderly.

She leans in to kiss him softly, one, twice, three times, just tender dances of their lips together.

When she pulls back, her fingers pick at the collar of his tee shirt.

"Can we talk about how I feel about this shirt?"

He looks down at his plain white shirt, offended.

"You don't like it? What's wrong with it?"

She blushes, and lays her hands low on his chest, spreading her fingers wide and running her hands up and out the breadth of his chest until her palms curl around the top of his biceps.

"That's, uh, that's not the problem."

A sly, cocky smile spreads across his face, and she's relieved to see that the guilt has dissipated and the spark she loves is returning to his eyes.

"You _do_ like this shirt. You like it a lot."

"Maybe I just like the man inside it."

She's not usually one to give out compliments freely; she considers it her job to keep his considerable ego in check. But, lately, she's been seeing more and more of his vulnerable side, the little cracks in his heart that the ego is meant to protect from the outside world. She's discovering that there are times to let her strength check his cockiness and there are times to let her love heal the heart beneath. She's not always confident in which is which, but she's learning.

"So... you're saying I should take it off, then?" He smirks, reaching for the hem of the shirt.

Clearly, he's ready to be done with serious and move on to their normal lighthearted banter. She eyes him thoughtfully, eyes skimming over his face and the span of his chest, down to where his hands have gathered the hem of his shirt up, revealing just an inch or two of tan skin. She's opening her mouth to reply when a loud grumble erupts from her stomach.

Deeks laughs, all traces of tension gone, dropping his shirt and reaching for her, pulling her into his lap and reaching down to poke at her sides.

"I suppose I need to feed you at some point, huh? Tequila doesn't really make for much of a dinner."

He stands and drops her back down on the couch.

"Pick a movie, I'll order us a pizza."

He hesitates a moment before he turns away to retrieve his phone.

"And Kens?" he leans down over her, pressing his forehead to hers and dropping a gentle kiss on her lips.

"Thank you."

* * *

_AN: I have so many million things to do this week, writing fanfic is the last thing I should be spending time on, but this and a couple others have been sitting on my computer half-finished for a while, and inspiration generally doesn't choose the most convenient times to strike. _

_Several things I'm working on are in various stages of done-ness and should be out fairly soon: one more tag for Black Wind is getting finished up, one for The Grey Man that's been stewing ever since that episode, and a few ideas for an epilogue for Crumble have been floating around in my head. _


	24. Every Part of You

"_I only ever want you to see the best part of me."_

_Kensi in 6x08, The Grey Man_

* * *

It takes three days and then four hours of watching a suspect's silent house before he decides the time is right to broach the subject that's been bothering him.

Either the time is right or he's just bored and the silence in the car is getting to him and he needs to make some noise. He's not entirely sure which option is true—maybe they both are—but, regardless, he finally blurts it out without warning.

"You know that I think all of you is the best part of you, right?"

When he says it like that it doesn't quite make the sense it did in his head, but he's pretty sure she knows what he means.

A scowl darkens her face and he can tell from her expression that she doesn't believe him, even though she never takes her eyes from the doorway in front of them.

"Kens—" he grabs her arm to turn her toward him. "I know, uh, I know that there are parts of you and your life that you don't like to talk about. But I don't want you to avoid talking about them because you're worried that I'll think less of you." His hand trails down her arm to her wrist, wanting to slip his fingers into hers but not quite daring. They're so close, but they're just not quite there yet.

"All the things you've been through, the parts of your life that you'd rather leave out, they're all a part of who you are. And I want all of who you are, not just the parts you think are worth sharing."

It's not quite a confession or a declaration of love. At least, he tells himself it's not. It could mean that he wants her as a friend or as a partner.

They both know that's not what he means.

That unspoken knowledge hangs heavy in the air as they carefully focus on the suspect's door, the dash, their phones, anything but each other.

Finally, her voice comes, timid in the silence.

"You can't possibly want all those parts of me, Deeks. Some of them are pretty messed up."

He cocks a disbelieving eyebrow at her.

"You really want to have a conversation about who has more messed up parts here, Kensi?"

"Deeks—" she starts but he cuts her off.

"Not my point, Kens. The point is, there are parts of both of us that aren't pretty. There are plenty of things that I'd rather you not know about me, just like you don't like for me to know them about you."

She looks at him steadily for a moment and then concedes his point with a slight nod. They both have secrets, they both have darkness in their pasts that they are slowly bringing in to the light. It's not a competition; they're not looking for pity. It's just the truth, and sometimes the truth is hard.

He draws her from her thoughts as he continues speaking softly, gazing out the front window.

"I want you to know that you don't have to worry about those things making me think less of you. When I hear them, they just remind me of how strong you are. You think they make you look weaker, I think they're just proof of your strength. It makes me happy when you trust me with the hard things."

Lately, he thinks there might be a chance that she might love him, or at least that she might come to love him someday. But if that day comes, he knows she can't really love all of him until she _knows_ all of him, and there's a part of him that desperately wants to know that that she has seen and heard the worst of him and chosen to love him despite it. There is freedom in that, in knowing that the one you love knows your darkest secrets and loves you anyway.

He wants her to have that kind of freedom, too. He wants her to know that she can share the hardest parts of herself with him and not worry that it will change how he thinks of her.

"All the parts of you are the best parts, because they're _you._" He's well aware that he sounds cheesy, but just because it's cheesy doesn't mean it's not true.

He's well aware they're treading into murky waters, and being trapped in the car dividing their attention between their conversation and a stake out is probably not the best time for this to go any further. He's made his point, so he smirks as he steers them away from deeper waters—for now.

"Though I do have different favorites depending on the situation," he continues. "Right now, for instance, I'm a pretty big fan of your-"

She cuts him off with a punch to his shoulder, though it lacks a lot of the force he knows it's capable of.

He was going to say cheekbones. He really was. He's been staring at them off and on for three hours now, and he's decided they're rather spectacular. He's never really thought about the way the shadows collect in the curve of her cheek right under her cheekbone, or the little dimples that sometimes appear there. Maybe it's the gathering shadows of the evening light that make the contrasts stand out, or maybe it's just that he keeps seeing her in whole new ways the more he looks at her.

And he looks at her a lot lately.

"Your cheekbones," he finishes with an exaggerated grunt. "I'm a big fan of your cheekbones."

She looks at him with an expression of amused disbelief. She was definitely expecting something more inappropriate, but when she looks at him, his eyes are playful but serious. She feels her cheeks warm and is thankful for the cover of the fading light.

"You were not going to say that," she scoffs, turning back to look out the windshield.

"Actually, I was," he argues, daringly reaching the tip of one finger out to gently trace the soft skin over the line of her cheekbone. As far as touches go, it's a fairly innocent gesture, but there's something intimate about it that sends his heart racing as she allows his touch.

The timbre of his voice is a little rougher than he expected when he speaks again.

"Every part of you, remember?"

She turns and catches his finger as it falls from her cheeks, giving it a gentle squeeze.

"Okay," she concedes. "I'll remember that."

* * *

_AN: This has been sitting on my computer for a long time, just waiting to be finished. After watching the Grey Man, I thought that scene with K/D really needed a follow up where Deeks had the chance to respond seriously to her statement. _

_I have a tag to last night's "Expiration Date" ep started (as I'm sure every other writer on here does...), but I wanted to get this one up and out first before it got lost again. A second tag to Black Wind is still sitting waiting for finishing touches, as well. _

_To Violetdoodlebuy and the rest of you waiting on an epilogue to Crumble, I finally have words down on paper for that, as well. :) _

_To MochaBuzzz, who just left a new review on my old story, _In Due Time_, it wouldn't let me reply to you, but thanks! Finding new reviews on my old stories is one of my favorite things. _

_And, as always, many thanks you all of you who have reviewed and favorited this- you make my day. Your reviews are the very best encouragement to me as a writer. _


	25. And Cupcakes

Tag to 6x16, "Expiration Date"

* * *

"I still think it's a good idea if we take some time apart sometimes," she starts as soon as he opens the door to find her on his porch just after the stroke of midnight, "but I think maybe it shouldn't be tonight."

"Missed me bad, huh?"

She rolls her eyes as she waits for him to invite her in.

"I just...I thought you shouldn't have to be alone tonight."

He stands there, silent, a little dumbstruck in the darkness of the quiet night. He's pretty sure no one but her has ever cared if he was dealing with hard things alone.

His steady, silent gaze unnerves her and she starts to second-guess herself.

"Unless… you actually want to be alone tonight. That's okay, too. I brought your kimchi, you can just have that and I can…"

She's rambling, but she doesn't know how to stop. She had assumed that his statement about celebrating meant that he wasn't really opposed to her company tonight, but maybe he's the kind of person who preferred to deal with things like this alone. In all the time they've known each other, they've never really talked about that kind of thing. They usually just hide from it. She's suddenly transported back to Sidarov, to other times things have wounded him, to the way he had retreated into himself to recover. Maybe that's how he deals with things. Maybe after Thapa he really did want to be alone.

His words break into her reverie.

"No. Kens, come in."

"You're sure?"

"If it's you, I'm always sure."

In truth, he hadn't been looking forward to crawling into bed alone tonight, which is probably why he was still wide awake on the couch at midnight. He's grown incredibly used to having her beside him as he drifts off and, with the loss of his friend still fresh in his mind, he hadn't been looking forward to the empty space beside him. He loves the comfort of her warmth in his arms.

He's been brooding over Thapa, yes. He's grieving for the man who had somehow become a friend and adviser in an incredibly short period of time, and he's grieving for the family that he will never get to go home to. But he's also brooding over his relationship with Kensi and their fight this morning.

He's been wondering all night if they got through their first fight because they were really past the issues that had come up, or if they had just chosen to ignore them again. He wonders if it bothered her that they weren't _normal_ before this morning or if it just occurred to her then, and if it still bothers her now. He wonders how long she's been wanting a night off and why she never let him know until he said something. He wonders if she really thinks that he doesn't accept all of her, or if she just said that to push his buttons. He wonders how her happiness is different with him than with her friends.

He must be looking at her too seriously as she draws four boxes of Korean takeout out of one of the bags she's carrying, because she sets them aside and turns to focus her attention on him.

"Are we okay?"

He smiles slightly.

"Thapa said... he said sometimes when you move too fast, things feel real before they really become real. Do you think that's what we're doing?"

She takes a moment of silent thought to consider that question.

"I think you and I were already pretty _real_ before we ever made anything official."

A tension that he hadn't even realized he was holding inside of him releases. Thapa's words had instilled a niggling fear that maybe he was only imagining that their relationship was as deep as he thought it was.

"So it doesn't bother you that we're not doing this like 'normal' people do?"

The evening apart- even if she did cut it short from being the full night that it was supposed to be- did her a lot of good. This morning she wouldn't have known how to answer that question, but now the answer slides easily off her tongue.

"You were right-" he chokes on the bite of food in his mouth and her glare cuts off the comment she knows is coming. "What you said this morning-we're _not_ normal. Our relationship has never been normal. We didn't just meet at a bar and hit it off enough to exchange phone numbers. We went all in. You were already the most important person in my life a long time ago. We do things differently. That's okay with me. I'm happy with that."

In answer, he drops his carton of food on the table and reaches for her, pressing a kiss to her temple as she allows her body to curl into his. That was the crux of his worry, that maybe she wasn't as happy in their relationship as he was.

She's quiet for a minute, but the word 'happy' brings up something else she wants to be sure he understands. Staring down at their laps, she catches one of his hands in hers.

"When I said that they make me happy," she ventures hesitantly, "I didn't mean to imply that you don't make me happy."

"I know," he says, squeezing her hand. "I don't need to be the _only_ thing that makes you happy," he murmurs in her ear. "I just need to know that I'm _enough_ to make you happy."

"You are. You do. You make me happy. Really happy." She needs him to know that, to understand that he's the most important factor in her happiness.

She expects some quick, cocky retort about how of course he makes her happy, but it doesn't come. She turns her eyes to his and finds them soft.

The sit there like that for a few minutes, comfortable in the silence and the now-familiar contact of their bodies.

"It's not that I didn't like your friends," he eventually offers. "They just weren't what was expecting."

"Well, what were you expecting?"

"I don't know, a bunch of women in power colors sipping martinis and debating foreign policy and the price of oil?"

She laughs.

"Is that what you think Nell and I do when we go out?"

He cocks his head and squints one eye and raises the other eyebrow. "I've never quite been able to picture what you and Nell do on your girls' nights."

"Not for lack of trying, I'm sure."

He grins. "You know me. I like to be... informed."

"Well, we don't drink martinis, and we don't debate politics."

"Noted."

She slumps back to press into his side, the late hour and the physical activity and emotional stress of the day starting to catch up to her.

"Why did they surprise you?"

"KatMindyMandyTiffanyandTiffani?" He asks, slurring their names together like they're a single unit.

"Yes, them." She says, hiding a grin in his shoulder.

"You're so... strong. And you were so serious when we met, and you're not so much anymore, I guess, but I just didn't picture you having that much tolerance for… girliness and giggling and cupcakes."

She smirks up at him playfully. "Oh, I have infinite tolerance for cupcakes."

He chuckles

"Okay, that one I knew."

They've known each other so long, so well, that sometimes he forgets that they don't necessarily understand each other perfectly. Then there are the time when it becomes glaringly obvious. They probably never will understand each other perfectly, and that's okay. Half the fun of the journey is in the discoveries along the way.

"They just… sometimes I need to NOT be serious, just be a little frivolous and be a girl for a while," she offers. "I don't have to be Special Agent Blye with them, I can just let loose and talk about girly things. I've known some of them since college, back before..." she breaks off, searching for the words to continue.

"Before life got serious?" he offers.

"Yeah. Before that. Before Badass Blye took over. They don't live like we do. They don't know what I do. They don't know how terrible people can be. It's... nice. It's nice to forget for a little while that the world sucks sometimes and just hang out with people whose most difficult problem this year will be deciding what color to dye their hair."

She laughs a little and looks up at him.

"That's why it's a different kind of happy with them. You and I will never be that naive again. Maybe it's partly an artificial kind of happiness, but it's nice sometimes."

"As long as you're happy, Kens, I'm okay with any kind of happiness you want."

Laughing, she shakes her head at him.

"You're so cheesy."

Breaking away from him long enough to reach for the second bag she had brought with her, she draws two cupcakes out. He wonders, briefly, where on earth she found cupcakes at midnight. And then he chuckles, because of _course_ she brought cupcakes.

"I figured if we were celebrating..." she murmurs, handing him one and starting to peel the wrapper off the other.

She polishes off hers and then steals a bite of his, as well, before they settle back into the corner of the couch, her back tucked into his chest as he speaks soft, unimportant things in her ear and her eyes grow drowsy

He's never had a place he really could call home- not one that felt like he imagines home should feel like, anyway. There's never been a place he's been that attached to, but Thapa was right. Home now is in her smile, in Monty's head on his knee and the way her shoulders shake with laughter against his chest, in the smell of her hair when breathes her in.

That's all the home he needs.

* * *

_AN: I'm not thrilled with it, but I've been playing with it all week and this is as good as it's going to get. The writer in me wants to expand this to see them to thoroughly dissect and come to an understanding on all of the things that came up through the episode, but I don't think that would be an honest portrayal of these characters. It bothered me to not address ALL of the things I think were bothering them, but I think this is much more realistic for them, so I made myself stop._

_I'd love to hear what you think, good or bad. _


	26. Beautiful Contradictions

_AN: It's been over a month since I posted in this story- wow!  
_

_I had to laugh earlier this week when dgreen79 posted a Densi story based on Brad Paisley's "The Perfect Storm," because I was in the middle of writing this one at the time, also inspired by that same song. Here's my take on it, set approximately in the current timeframe of the show, but at no exact time._

* * *

_"She's Sunday drive meets high speed chase,_

_She ain't just a song; she's the whole mix tape._

_And she destroys me in that t-shirt_

_And I love her so much it hurts_

_I never meant to fall like this_

_But she don't just rain, she pours._

_That girl right there is the perfect storm._

_I know how to make her laugh or blush or mad at me_

_But that's OK, there ain't no one more beautiful angry_

_…And I love her just the way that God made her_

_Sunshine mixed with a little hurricane."_

_(From Brad Paisley's "The Perfect Storm")_

* * *

He's coming out of the bathroom on his way back to his spot on the couch when he is stopped in his tracks by the sight before him.

She's sprawled out on the couch in the most unladylike position imaginable, beer in one hand, her mouth full of popcorn that sprays out when she snort-laughs at the ridiculous movie on the TV screen. Her oversized sweatpants are rolled down at the waist, and he's not sure anymore if the plain tee shirt she's wearing was originally his or hers. The residue of the day's makeup is smudged, and her hair is wild and uncontrolled.

She's a mess, and she's completely and utterly captivating.

His heart swells as if unable to contain his thoughts as he is struck anew with the certainty that he loves this woman. He knew this before now. The declaration has been dancing at the edge of his tongue for weeks, but it has never hit him as hard as it does in this moment. Until now, he's been able to contain it, but suddenly the thought of holding it in anymore makes him feel claustrophobic.

She is fierce and powerful and yet she is all woman. Both tough and tender, she is all sharpness wrapped in soft curves, iron wrapped in lace. Beautiful and dangerous, she is caustic humor and girlish giggles. She holds his hand and has his back and fills his heart.

She is a being full of beautiful contradictions.

He is beginning to think that maybe he has only begun to scratch the surface.

There was a time when he lived for dressed-up-Kensi: party dresses, high heels, fancy hair, smoky makeup. It used to be that that's when she made his heart race and his eyes widen.

These days, he thinks what's in front of him right now is his favorite version of her; the one who is unselfconsciously flopped on his couch, relaxed and comfortable. This is the Kensi that belongs only to him, the one she doesn't show to anyone else.

He still loves that other version of her, the one in the knockout clothes and the perfect makeup—he loves all the versions of her. She still makes his heart race and his eyes pop. He's still proud to be the one that's by her side. But that version of her belongs to the whole world, to anyone with eyes who finds her in their field of view.

This part of her, the one with her guard down and the grease stain on her t shirt, a little bit girly and a little bit of a mess, is just his, and that makes it infinitely more precious.

"Can you stop being creepy and come sit down?" The tone of her voice as it carries across the room tells him that she's still a little annoyed with him for smarting off earlier.

Taking the remote, he flicks the TV off.

Her eyes darken as she glares at him, irritated.

"I was watching that."

"Yeah, don't care," he tosses out with a grin and her eyes spark dangerously.

"You will care in a minute if you don't give me back the remote."

There is a long silence while he leans in and his eyes roam her face, wondering why he's so attracted to the deadly glint in her eyes. His gaze traces the line of her lips, the curve of her cheekbone, the smudge of her eyeliner at the corners of her eyes.

Growing impatient and uncomfortable with his intense scrutiny, Kensi grumbles, "Why are you being such a creeper tonight?"

Long fingers find their way to the sides of her face, holding her gently, as if to keep her from pulling away.

"I like to look at you. That doesn't make me a creeper."

A flush steals across her cheeks. Her eyes flit away and for a moment Kensi Blye looks almost shy. It's not an expression he sees on her often. It's another one of those parts of her that he thinks of as belonging to him and it steals his breath and warms his heart. Shy Kensi is rare, and the need to finally speak those three little words overwhelms him again.

"It kinda does, actually," she deflects.

"Kens," he murmurs softly, drawing her eyes back to his. His fingers tighten and tremble a little, unsure of how she's going to respond.

Suddenly shifting, he draws her up and settles himself in the corner of the couch, drawing her back to lean against his chest, wrapping his arms around her stomach and his body around hers. He likes to look at her, but he also likes to touch her. There are moments, like this one, when he feels a raw need to have as much of his body touching hers as possible.

Leaning his face into the side of hers, his voice is a low rumble at her back as he speaks quietly.

"I love you."

He can feel the awareness flow through her body as she leans against him, and the hair by his face shifts as she looks down at his arms and then turns up to look him in the eye, her dark eyes unreadable.

"So you decided to imprison me so that I couldn't run when you told me?"

"What? No! I—"

Glancing down as he speaks, he sees what she means. His arms and legs are locked around her, trapping her in place. Maybe that's subconsciously what he was doing.

"I didn't mean—" he starts mumbling, shifting his legs and releasing his arms quickly.

"Deeks," she says, and he feels her shoulders shake against him in what feels like a silent laugh. Her fingers lace with his and she draws his arms back into place around her.

Turning her head to look at him again, she reaches up to draw his face down to hers. There's a sweet, soft, gently amused smile on her face.

That one is definitely reserved just for him, as are the words she speaks next.

"I love you, too."

* * *

_AN: The idea for this has been rattling around in my mind for months now, but for some reason it's one that I've really struggled to get down on paper. It's not what imagined it would be when I first started writing it, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Either way, it's done.  
_

_I'm toying with the idea of a Fighting Shadows tag, but I'm not sure if that will go anywhere or not. _


	27. Bold

Tag to 6x19, Blaze of Glory.

* * *

_"And Valentine's Day?" - Sam_

_"Don't ask" -Kensi_

_"Twice the flowers, twice the chocolate, quarter the price." - Deeks_

_Blaze of Glory_

* * *

She says "don't ask" because it's expected, because she's supposed to act like she's put out by her partner's shenanigans, and because Callen and Sam need her to say it so they can feel like nothing has really changed even though apparently the entire office knows about her relationship with Deeks.

She also says "don't ask" because she genuinely doesn't want them to. Not because she's upset or annoyed with Deeks' Valentine's plans, quite the opposite, it's just something she feels the need to keep for herself. It doesn't belong to them, it belongs to her and Deeks and only her and Deeks. It's the first Valentine's Day that she has celebrated in over a decade, and it's too significant, too intimate to share even with Callen and Sam.

They're like family, but even family doesn't need to know everything.

* * *

"You liked our Valentine's Day right? I mean, it seemed like you liked it."

She's laying across the couch late that night, one calf hooked up over the back cushion, Monty's head on her leg, and her head in Deeks' lap. His fingers are playing absently though her hair when he blurts out the question.

Two bottles of his clearance St. Patrick's Day beer are sitting open on the coffee table, and both their lips are lightly tinted green.

Despite his earlier spiel, it had actually been her request that they not get too extravagant for Valentine's Day; all the hype just wasn't her thing. So, when the day came around, he did his best to both honor her request and satisfy his romantic side. There was a gorgeous orchid plant that he promised to help her keep alive. There was a small box of expensive handmade chocolates. There was homemade dinner in picnic basket, consumed by candlelight nested in a pile of blankets and pillows in the bed of his truck under the stars overlooking the city lights, and ice cream on the way home. They'd parked at an overlook off Mulholland Drive overlooking LA as the sun set and daylight faded into twinkling night and, laying there in their nest of blankets, surrounded by darkness almost unheard of inside LA city limits, she'd curled into her partner's chest and started to believe in happily ever afters again.

_Liked it_ was an absurdly inadequate understatement.

Then, three days later, as he told the guys, there were twice the flowers, twice the chocolate, the cheesy card, the jewelry, the fancy dinner.

Turns out, she liked that, too.

"I _know_ you liked the twice the chocolate part," he tells her, grinning down at her.

"Of course I liked it. I liked all of it. It was perfect."

"Then why did you tell the guys 'don't ask' like I screwed something up?" He's trying to be playful, but the slight edge in his voice gives him away.

She forgets sometimes, even now, that he's not really as confident as his cocksure attitude would make you believe.

"It's none of their business," she says forcefully. "Our relationship, our Valentine's Day plans don't have anything to do with them. I just... I like it to be _ours. _I don't care that they know we're together, but that doesn't mean they need to know everything we do in our time off. Some things are supposed to be private."

She doesn't feel bad about wanting to keep their life private even from their friends, but she's starting to think that maybe she just needs to say "screw it" to making Sam and Callen comfortable and speak up for her man sometimes. She's never been shy about doing it when it really counts, but maybe it's time to do it on the stupid little things, too. She assumes that because he knows she loves him, he also knows that she respects him, but maybe that's not entirely true, maybe he still needs her to take his side sometimes, even in their lighthearted office banter, to tell the world that she thinks highly of him. She's never been one for public displays of affection or cheesy, mushy public declarations, but by now she's pretty sure that he is. Maybe part of loving him is learning to love him in his way and not just her own.

* * *

She has to laugh a few days later when the chance to love him out loud is practically dropped in her lap. "Twice the chocolate" was a gross understatement—unless he makes a habit of buying out half the Valentine's aisle for his Valentine's dates—so it's into late March now that her Valentine's stash has finally been depleted. She's browsing the Easter candy and pawing through the remaining St. Patrick's and Valentine's clearance when she finds it staring up at her from underneath a couple of broken chocolate hearts and a pair of shamrock antennae.

The print is bright red and gaudy and it definitely makes a statement. It's even on sale; he would totally approve.

Grabbing it and a couple—okay, several—packages of candy, she takes off for the checkout, smiling the whole way.

* * *

She hangs onto her purchases for three days, until their now-weekly night off. She hadn't been a huge fan of the weekly night off when he had proposed it, but it does come in handy sometimes, even if she does go to bed on some of those nights reminding herself "time apart is healthy. Time apart is healthy" over and over again. She leaves early in the morning, makes a detour to his favorite coffee shop, and still arrives at work with time to spare before Deeks, Callen, or Sam arrive.

She dumps his favorite latte from the paper cup into the brand new mug and sets it on top of the box she just put on his desk, grinning at her own handiwork. Creative gifts have never been her forte, but this is about stepping outside of her comfort zone for him, and she's pretty proud of it.

It's a white mug, liberally sprinkled with hearts and pink lipstick prints that surround the bold red print that reads: "My Girlfriend Thinks I'm Sexy." Underneath it is a box of chocolate Angry Birds Easter eggs. "From your Ladybird" is scribbled on a blank corner of the packaging. She even gave in to her feminine side and ended it with a tiny heart.

Sam and Deeks arrive at the same time, and Sam greets Kensi and plops into his seat with an eyeroll and a suppressed smile when he notices the additions to their desk space.

Deeks' eyes catch hers before he sees her offerings, and a smile brightens his face. "Good morning Sunshine!" he calls out. The greeting isn't unusual, but his eyes and his smile convey a more intimate _I missed you_. There's something to be said for that extra warmth in his eyes and in her smile after they've been apart for the night.

When his eyes break from hers, he spots the items on his desk and looks at them suspiciously. She can almost hear him mentally working through all the potential ways that this could be a prank. Then he sees her scrawled note and the suspicion on his face disappears.

Darn it, she loves the way his face lights up. Maybe gifts at work are a bad idea; now she wants to kiss him, and even though she might be saying "screw it" to trying to keep Sam and Callen comfortable, she's pretty sure that that much PDA would be frowned on by everyone, particularly their diminutive leader and her gruff sidekick.

He takes a cautious sip out of the mug and surprise and pleasure flit across his face.

"Been scrounging through the clearance bins again, Deeks?" Callen asks as he meanders in, eyes the bright mug.

"It was a gift, actually," he says, smirking over the rim of his cup and finding her eyes again as Callen takes his seat beside Kensi at the desk.

Ambling over, Deeks props a hip on her end of the desk and leans in close so that he can keep his voice low and still be heard.

"What's the occasion?"

"No occasion."

He cocks his head to the side, unbelieving.

"My ladybird is sharing chocolate with me for no reason?"

Inwardly, she groans. She should have known better than to make "ladybird" into a thing. Now he's going to add it to the list.

"Maybe your ladybird just loves you. Isn't that a good reason?"

It's not the first time she's said it, but his reaction is the same every time. His face is like a child's, dazed and awestruck and delighted as he discovers the wonders of the wide world. It's humbling to watch as her words make the world open up before his very eyes and the smile cracks his face in two. It's not the first time that she's sat here with him tantalizingly close, wanting to kiss him and not being able to. The difference is, now she knows that as soon as they get home she'll be allowed to act on that impulse.

She's not exactly comfortable with this, with the guys watching this quasi-intimate moment and seeing her message to Deeks emblazoned publicly on his coffee cup, but there's something daring about it, too. Something bold and free and unashamed, and she kind of loves it, even as it embarrasses her a little. And there's no question that she loves the smile on his face, the way he's looking at her with awe and adoration. It's totally worth the minor discomfort. Nothing worthwhile ever comes without a little discomfort.

Callen's voice cuts into their space and bursts their quiet bubble.

"Alright, lovebirds, knock it off. Eric wants us in Ops,"

Deeks has to clear his throat quietly before he speaks, and his hand finds her knee under the cover of the desk and gives it a gentle squeeze as he leans in to whisper in her ear before he turns toward the stairs.

"That's an awesome reason."

* * *

_AN: Just a fluffy little break in the midst of whatever is about to explode with Deeks on the show. This popped out of Deeks' commentary on Monday's ep, my desire to know what they did for Valentine's, and me discovering Angry Birds Easter eggs. There may be a Densi Day companion to it coming up in a few days... _


	28. Lovebirds

Chapter 28, "Lovebirds."

A companion to chapter 27, "Bold."

* * *

"Do you know what today is?"

His scruff is tickling her ear as he wriggles his face into the space at the crook of her neck from behind, his voice vibrating through the pillow her face is resting on.

She grumbles an incoherent, sleepy negative into the pillow. Why is he awake already?

"It's our meetaversary."

"Our what?" she grumbles sleepily, flipping over and squinting her eyes and then stretching them wide to try to wake herself up.

"Our meetaversary," he repeats, and her sleepy brain takes a moment to sort out his meaning.

"You know that anniversary just means _yearly return, _right? So anything can be an anniversary, you don't have to make up a new name for it."

"Whatever, Wikipedia. We met five years ago today."

"So our partner anniversary."

"No, we didn't become partners, really, until like a week later. Actually, I became your liaison a week later. I guess you could say we didn't technically become partners until like six months later, since I was gone for the whole time in between, and you technically still had a different partner."

_Huh. True. _So their partner anniversary is in... September?

"I got you a present," he continues, ignoring the issue of other anniversary dates and dropping a box on her lap.

"I didn't get you anything."

"Maybe we can sneak off to the burn room today and make out a little bit. That sounds like a great present," he grins, raising his eyebrows enticingly.

"Hetty probably has hidden cameras even in there," she retorts as she unwraps a small, lightweight box. She draws out a gray fitted t-shirt and bursts out laughing.

"Get it? Cuz the guys call us lovebirds and you're my Ladybird?" He asks eagerly, clearly pleased with himself.

"I get it, Deeks. If you have to explain it, it's not funny."

It's a simple gray shirt, v-neck like she's so fond of, with the dark silhouette of two birds nestled together on a branch painted across the front. Lovebirds.

"Is this going to be our thing now, birds?"

"It can be the next metaphor for our relationship," he grins.

"Oh, please no."

"Hey, you started it."

"YOU started it. I merely repeated it once."

"Twice."

"I was speaking in code so Granger wouldn't know who it was referring to."

"And you bought me eggs. Birds eggs."

She looks at him, confused.

"My Ladybird gave me eggs," he repeats, enunciating carefully. "Something symbolic there, maybe? For a few minutes there I thought maybe I'd missed a hidden message you were trying to send me."

She stares at him blankly. _What?_

"But then I figured you probably wouldn't tell me something like that at work."

Ladybird. Bird. Woman. Eggs. Offspring. _Oh. _

"Oh, my gosh Deeks. No. We're not— There's a whole lot that needs to happen before we even think about thinking about that. Isn't there?" She finishes feebly.

"Sooo, you're saying I should put a ring on it first,"

"Yes! Wait, no!— I didn't mean... I guess if we—before we... That's not exactly what I meant to say."

"But you're maybe not opposed to the idea at some point in the future?"

"The egg part, or the ring part?"

Are they actually talking about this?

"Uh... both?" He ventures tentatively. "But I guess I meant the ring part. Yeah, first the ring part."

"Like your ten-year-rule kind of sometime-in-the-future?"

He catches her eyes and seems to weigh what he sees in them, gauging his response on the level of fear in her eyes.

"I wouldn't be necessarily opposed to upping that timetable. Assuming, hypothetically, that my girlfriend was on board with the idea. Not, like, right now, but maybe not five years from now either."

Her heart is racing, but the answer comes out easily, more easily than she ever would have expected it to.

"Well, then hypothetically, no." Her hands that are holding the box in her lap are trembling, but she's not entirely sure if it's from fear or from the nervous excitement that's racing through her. This is so not how she expected to be feeling during this conversation. "I'm maybe not opposed to the idea at some point in the not-now-but-not-five-years-from-now future."

When she catches his eyes she sees her own fear reflected in them, but she sees more than just that. She sees hope. Joy. Love. He holds her eyes as the fear and the hope and the nervous excitement pass between them like a current, wild and unfamiliar and thrilling.

"Okay then," he finally says lamely, dropping his eyes and clearing his throat. "That's... good to know. Good to know."

Hopping off the bed, he takes the covers with him, causing her to curl into a ball at the sudden rush of cool air.

"Pancakes in the kitchen!" he yells, heading out the bedroom door, his familiar cheerful morning voice quieting the thoughts and emotions that their conversation had started whirling. She loves this man. Whatever the future brings, she doesn't see that ever changing. They can do this. One step at a time, they will do this.

* * *

_I don't know where this came from. All I had planned when I started was Deeks' gift in honor of Densi day, and the rest just kind of appeared out of thin air. Stories do that to me sometimes._

_I know that some people call Ladybugs Ladybirds, but that's a strange foreign concept to me, so I assume that Ladybird in this context is not referring to a bug, but an actual bird._

_I'm not sure this actually fits with the canon right now as their tensions are high and the pressure in on them with whatever is going on with LAPD, but I can see them having a conversation like this randomly somewhere in the not-too-distant future when things are a little lighter. I have a feeling the next couple weeks of the Deeks storyline are either going to throw a wrench in their relationship and back them further away from this point, or bond them and make their relationship even stronger. We'll see, I guess._


	29. Charmed

It's not an anniversary or a her birthday or any other special occasion when he drops a small, neatly wrapped box into her hand. It's just a lazy Saturday morning after he returns from the beach.

The wrapping removed, she dumps a heavy silver and glass circle into her hand and examines it with interest as it lies in the center of her palm. The rim of the small circular frame is silver, and there's a flat pane of glass on both sides; you could look straight through it if not for the fact that behind the glass, a copper plate lies buried beneath a multitude of tiny colorful charms. The word engraved on the plate just peeks out from behind: 

"_Forever"_

"It's called a living locket." Deeks' low voice interrupts her examination with an oddly timid explanation. "There was this booth at the mall and the lady told me you could make a locket to tell your story," he continues. "She had all these tiny little charms to choose from... I might have got a little carried away." 

He stumbles over his reasons for buying her the keychain version instead of the necklace version and she knits her brow at his uncharacteristic nervousness as she examines all the tiny charms and reads their story in them as the moments flash through her mind. 

_This is Tracey, Danny's girl._

_Stuck, smitten, whatever._

_Deeks? Really? That's the best they could do?_

_Don't worry Fern, I'll be back._

_Well, you're not a real girl. You're like – you're like Wonder Woman._

_I just have a thing about my gun.  
_

_Yes, Princess?  
_

_You smell like sunshine... and gunpowder. Two of my favorite things. _  
_  
I'll settle for a _beer every_ day for the _rest_ of my _life_._

_You're my frozen lake.  
_

___Everyone has three hearts..._

_Contrary to hundreds of years of scientific research, I believe that raccoons do mate for life._

_Sometimes a knife is just a knife._

_Cards on the table?  
All in.  
_

There's a microscopic gun and a tiny badge. A boxing glove for their first meeting, and for all the time they've spent fighting—on and off the mat—since then. There are charms for his nicknames for her: a fern leaf; a pink rhinestone crown; a smiling yellow sun; the Wonder Woman insignia. There's a bitsy brown beer bottle for all those nights they've spent on the town and on the couch, and for all the ones she still owes him. There's a knife, a microscopic ice cube, a tiny ice skate and a hand of playing cards, a silver raccoon and three bubbly hearts, one of which has the word _PARTNER _etched into it's surface. 

Her breath catches and then is sucked out of her as she recognizes the last tiny charm under the glass. 

"Deeks, there's an—" 

Her eyes fly up to find him, and they don't have to move far before they find him on his knees. Well, on _one_ knee. 

The rest of her sentence proceeds out of her mouth automatically. 

"—engagement ring in here." 

The real thing is pinched between his fingers, glinting in the sunlight, and her eyes go wide. 

"If I have three hearts, they all belong to you. I'm ready for the next step of our story. Do forever with me?"

* * *

The day she says "I do," he swaps one of the hearts out for a new one. The word _WIFE_ is stamped into its surface.

* * *

One May morning, almost two years into their marriage, unbeknownst to him, she swaps out another one.

When he wakes that Sunday morning, she's laying waiting for him, watching as the sleep clears from his eyes.

She pulls a miniature box from her pocket and presents it to him. 

Inside, he finds her locket and, bewildered, examines it until he finds the new little charm and stares at it confusedly. 

Staring back at him is a green teenage mutant ninja turtle face with a blue mask. _Is it Raph? Michaelangelo? _He can't remember. 

His eyes fly up to hers and then back to the locket in his hands and he notices that there's been another change. _All_ of the hearts now have writing on them. One says _WIFE. _One says_ PARTNER. _

One says _MOM. _

* * *

_AN: I had intended for this to be a little bit more filled out, but it just wanted to stop here, as little snippets of moments. _

_I'm making living locket keyrings for my sisters and sisters-in-law as we all prepare to move hours, states, and continents away from each other over the course of the next few months. As I was searching for the perfect charms to represent each of us, I came across all these charms that reminded me of Densi things, and this was somehow born. _

_All the charms that Deeks buys Kensi in this story are actually available as living locket charms._


	30. An Accidental Announcement

_AN: I have no idea where this came from. I was working on a totally different chapter for this collection, and suddenly this happened._

_It's good to be back! _

* * *

Fall 2016

Kensi is meandering back to her desk from the bathroom, checking her fantasy football scores as she goes. She's totally beating Deeks, which is her number one priority in this league, though he's proving to be more competition than she expected.

The guys' voices float across the room to her, just then end of a comment—a sentence that ends in"…and poor Mrs. Deeks." Her head snaps up and her stride quickens.

Rounding on Deeks, she fixes him with her best incredulous glare, "Deeks!"

"Kensi..." he draws out her name warily, confused about why she sounds so upset at him.

"You told them!? We agreed that weren't going to tell them yet!"

"No, Kens, I didn't te—" He starts, but she interrupts him.

"They just called me Mrs. Deeks!" She accuses, "If you didn't tell them, how did they know?"

Deeks coughs loudly and then clears his throat, swinging his eyes over to Callen and Sam in turn.

She looks up just in time to catch the wide-eyed shock on Callen and Sam's faces and then swings back to catch Deeks' sheepish grimace.

"They were just teasing me princess," he faux whispers, "About a hypothetical future Mrs. Deeks that they were feeling sorry for. _You_ just told them our news, though, so they definitely know now."

She grimaces, looks apologetic and manages to choke out, "Sorry… That didn't exactly go as we planned" through her shock.

Deeks just grins; life didn't often go as planned. He never would have planned for NCIS, never could have dreamed of having this beautiful woman next to him as his wife. He thinks maybe, though, that he _should_ have planned better how to smooth over the news and handle the reactions of the surrogate big brothers of team when they found out.

Callen and Sam's eyes are swinging back and forth between them, suddenly processing this unexpected discovery, and storm clouds are gathering in their expressions.

"Well gentlemen, may I present to you the un-hypothetical Mrs. Deeks in the flesh. Feel sorry for her if you dare," Deeks announces with pride.

"You're actually _MARRIED_?"

"You don't have to sound so shocked about it." Deeks deflects, sensing Kensi is still not prepared to respond to their reactions. "I'm a catch. Any woman would be thrilled if I offered to put a ring on it."

By now, Kensi has come to her senses enough to elbow him in the ribs.

He takes the hand attached to the offending elbow and smiles down at her. Callen and Sam just continue staring at them and then at each other incredulously. Deeks sighs.

"Well, believe it or not, I did put the ring on it, she said yes, and we have officially been an old married couple for six whole days."

"Six days? Last weekend? Why was I not invited to this?" Sam grumbles.

Deeks rolls his eyes, "You don't invite people when you elope. That's not how it works."

At Sam's black look, he quickly adds, "But now that the news is out, my beautiful wife and I would love to invite you all out for dinner and drinks tonight to celebrate the union of our lives," he says with a dramatic flourish: "We can even go out to a club later and you can dance the night away and pretend that you're at our fancy expensive reception, and then you won't have missed anything."

"Except actually seeing you take your vows," Sam quips.

"And throwing your bachelor party," Callen adds.

"Throwing rice at you."

"Wedding cake."

"Dancing with the bride."

"Free alcohol."

"Watching _you_ try to dance."

"Making a toast at your reception."

"Watching you sweat buckets from the nerves."

"Hearing Kensi promise to _obey._"

"Seeing my wife all dressed up."

"Dinging our glasses all night long."

"Giving the bride away."

This earns him a sharp look from Callen: "Who says you get to give the bride away? I would totally be the one to give the bride away."

This quickly escalates from who has more right to give the bride away into who is more likely to be the best man, who would give the better toast, and on until Deeks and Kensi are rolling their eyes and returning to being thankful they decided to elope. _Good grief! _

"Ahem!" Deeks interrupts, and they both turn to find Kensi and Deeks, who are wearing identical eyebrow-raised expressions of amusement.

"Regardless of who wins this argument," Kensi informs them, "the bride has already given herself away."

"As has the groom," Deeks interjects.

"But we would still like to take you all out for dinner and celebrate with you," Kensi finishes.

There's a pause of awkward silence while the guys stare and them and the dinner invitation hangs in the air. Sam is the one who finally breaks it.

"You really eloped?"

Deeks sighs. He really hadn't anticipated it being this big of a deal. He's pretty sure Callen doesn't actually care one whit about weddings, and who knew that Sam was so enthusiastic about them?

"We really eloped," Kensi confirms firmly.

"Why?" Sam's question sounds suspiciously like a three-year-old's whine.

"Kensi really didn't want to plan a wedding, and I didn't want to wait. I proposed, we decided we were ready to get married, so we got married." Deeks explains, hoping to garner some understanding. It all seemed like a logical sequence to him.

The only response he gets is a grudging grumble of acknowledgment.

"And now, we really would like to take you out for dinner and provide the free alcohol that you missed out on by not being invited to a fancy wedding," he prompts again, hoping to appease them.

There's a long pause again while the guys decide whether or not to forgive this heinous offense.

"It better be somewhere good," Callen finally assents.

Deeks grabs his wife's hand and grins down at her, wondering just where exactly you can get reservations somewhere good at the last minute. Maybe Hetty or Kip can help with that. "We'll do our best."

"Fine," Sam adds, "But I still want to dance with the bride later."


	31. Ours

As Deeks' mom returns to the counter to check one of the pots bubbling on the stove, he reaches out and slips an arm around her waist to draw her into his side. Where she belongs. Where he's wanted to have her all day while she had badgered him about his lies and Talia had flirted with him.

Her soft form is still a little tense against him, so he gently runs one hand up and down her back and smooths the other over her hair as he places a kiss on her temple.

"Sorry," he murmurs, lips still pressed to her skin. He's been trying for two days to figure out how he was going to tell her that his mom had showed up on his doorstep for a visit. The plumber story had been a spur of the moment lie when he hadn't yet figured out what to do, and it had just gotten more complicated from there. He knows he should have given her a little more warning, but he was afraid that she wouldn't come if he told her any sooner. Given her reaction just now, he thinks that was a reasonable fear.

There was a tense moment there while the two of them sized each other up when he wasn't sure how this was going to go. His mom is blunt and abrupt, and he knows Kensi was unprepared and taken aback by her sudden introduction to his one-of-a-kind mother.

They are both strong, opinionated women, and he'd been just a touch worried that those qualities would make them clash. But, as he hoped, and as it turns out, these two particular strong, opinionated women happen to appreciate strength and straightforwardness in other women, and Kensi's nervous bluntness was exactly the kind of unapologetic, unadulterated honesty that would appeal to this woman his mother has become, who spent far too much of her life dealing with too much BS and now shuns anything blunt honesty.

He's sure he's going to pay for everything that's happened today but, for now, he's standing in his kitchen with the two most important women in his world. His mother has just given her stamp of approval on the woman he's pretty sure he's going to spend the rest of his life with, and he's about to share his favorite meal with them both. Life could be a lot worse.

* * *

They're seated on the couch later, just chatting after the meal is over, when his mom excuses herself to go to the restroom. Kensi had started the evening an irritatingly proper distance from him on the couch, but as the evening wore on and her comfort level increased, she's gradually crept closer and melted into his side.

"Stay." He murmurs into her hair, hopeful, as soon as his mom is out of earshot. They've been apart for two nights already, and he's quite certain that he's not anxious to make it three. One night off occasionally is quite enough for him.

The two most important women in his life have met. They profess to like each other. They're sitting in a room together, getting to know each other. He really wants to keep this going. And he really doesn't want to sleep alone again tonight.

"I'm not staying here while your mom is here, Deeks," she rebuffs, "That's super awkward."

"C'mon, Kens, what if she decides to stay indefinitely?" he groans, thinking of the cold sheets and the lack of the soft form of his girlfriend in his arms when he wakes up tomorrow morning. "Are you just never going to stay while she's here?"

"We just met, _Martin._ And the guest room is right next to our room. Awkward. And you're still in the doghouse."

He deflates more. So, no snuggle buddy tonight.

He will admit to himself that he does like to have the bed to himself occasionally. It's nice to be able to spread out and move around without worrying about disturbing anyone else. It's great for the first couple hours, until his body and his subconscious remind him that _she is not there with him._ He sleeps fitfully now without her familiar form next to him. Two nights in a row is more than enough for him to start seriously missing the warm presence by his side.

He'd feel terrible leaving his mom alone for a night when she came all this way just to visit him, but if Kensi won't stay here, maybe he can sneak over to Kensi's just one night? The thought makes him feel sixteen all over again, sneaking out of his parents' house to meet a girl. Except this time his parent is in _his_ house, and he's contemplating sneaking out of his own home. Still, his mom is planning to be here for another whole week, and he's going to be seriously sleep deprived and cranky by the end of it if he has to sleep alone that whole time.

There is almost a full minute of silence as he's thinking before the words she'd used really register with his brain.

Then his heart swells and, even if he is in the doghouse, he knows that all is going to be right with the world.

_Our room. _

She just called it _our_ room.


	32. Nightmares

_AN: I think maybe I dreamed this, because it just suddenly appeared in my brain in the middle of the night one night. If I had to give it a timeframe, I'd imagine it happening some time in the near future, perhaps in the next couple of months or so. _

* * *

He wakes from a fitful sleep in a cold sweat and reaches for her, thinking, in that realm of half-awakeness where the lines between dream and reality are blurred and indiscernible, that it had _all_ been a dream. When his arms come up empty, a cold fog of panic swamps him. If it had not all been a dream, his half-awake self reasons, then it must all have been reality.

It's a reality he can't handle.

Slowly the nightmare fades and the boundaries of the real and the imagined become clear again. The panic subsides, but only slightly. He's in his bed. Kensi is across town in hers. She hasn't left him—yet—but neither are they good.

In the dream, she had calmly and firmly ended it, told him she didn't love him, that this wasn't what she wanted, and that it wasn't enough.

In reality, they had actually fought. There had been yelling. He had said things he definitely didn't mean. She had said things he really hoped she didn't mean. Things like _I wasn't prepared for this _and _I don't know if this is working _and _you need to just leave me alone. _

The yelling is good, he thinks. Much better than the cold calm of his dream. The yelling is bluster that has already passed. They're both passionate, opinionated, stubborn people. Sometimes those stubborn, passionate opinions clash. Sometimes they react before they really think. It hurts, but they're getting better about it.

The calm decision of his dream is far worse. It's well thought out, intentional, conclusive, not just fueled by the moment's emotions. He can handle the bluster as long as he never has to hear that calm, cool voice from his dream, telling him it's over for good. Just the memory of leaves him shaken and leaves little fingers of dread gripping his heart.

* * *

He wakes again to movement in his bed. As he opens bleary eyes, an arm appears around his stomach that definitely wasn't there when he fell asleep. A cold nose presses to the skin below his ear and soft lips brush across his jawline.

"I'm sorry.

The warmth behind him molds into his back, and his tense body truly relaxes for the first time in hours. He grabs the hand on his chest and laces his fingers with hers, squeezing tightly.

"Me, too."

"Talk tomorrow?" she mumbles, her breath warm on his skin where her mouth rests on his back.

"Yeah. We'll talk tomorrow."

He lays there and feels her breaths start to lengthen, and his own exhausted body pulls him back toward sleep, but before he relents, he can't help but roll over in her arms and draw her into himself, wrapping his arms around her and dropping a kiss onto the pile of dark hair now spilling over his chest.

"I love you," he murmurs into it, tightening his arms around her. She needs to know that. No matter what they say when they're upset, he's never loved anything likes he loves her.

This time, when he drifts off to sleep, he knows he won't dream again of losing her. The anchor of her weight on his chest and in his arms holds him firmly in reality. As her sleepy response vibrates across his skin, he breathes another relieved sigh, certain that no matter what bumps may come along the road, there's nowhere else, real or imagined, that he would rather be.

"Love you, too."


	33. Something Good

_AN: My television is choosing to go haywire and not let me watch NCIS:LA tonight, so I'm spending the time finishing a fanfic inspired by the sneak peek while I wait for it to be available online…_

_This is a scene that came to mind as I watched Sneak Peek #2 for tonight's episode, "Blame it on Rio."_

* * *

Deeks is still glaring at Dinozzo every time his head is turned by the time he and Kensi are pulling out of the parking lot to pick up lunch. He's barely slammed his door behind him before he starts grumbling.

"What kind of agent loses his prisoner? He gives a bad name to Police Detectives AND NCIS agents."

Kensi heaves a sigh. "You heard the story, Deeks, we're just here to help him finish the job he was sent to do. This is _our _agency. We're on the same team."

"Well, maybe he should keep better track of his things and not come bother us. He should be spending his time hunting down leads, not hitting on you."

Kensi wants to laugh because the only word that she can think of to describe his expression is _pout. _ He's doing a remarkable impression of a three-year-old who's not getting his way. She stifles the laughter and placates him.

"The man is obviously a flirt. He clearly doesn't mean anything by it, and it doesn't need to bother you. It's not like I'm flirting back, I'm just being considerate and helpful to a fellow agent who is in trouble. You have nothing to worry about. Stop being weird."

Deeks just continues to glower at the dashboard, and Kensi rolls her eyes to the ceiling.

"He's not actually interested in me Deeks, that's just his personality—which bears some striking similarities to _your _personality, by the way." She rolls her eyes again when he still doesn't move, "And besides, he's old!"

This, finally, makes Deeks grin widely. "I'm totally going to tell him you said that."

Kensi glares at him. "You're going to damage the poor man's self-esteem just to make yourself feel better? Mature. Very mature of you."

"I don't have to like it when other guys flirt with you," he retorts.

"I'm not asking you to like it! I'm asking to trust me and not behave like a four-year-old Neanderthal."

"But—"

"Deeks," she cuts in, "who is the man that I love?"

"Me?" His voice is half hesitant and half sheepish.

"And whose house am I practically living in?"

"Mine?"

Her look turns pointed.

"And who will I be going home with after work tonight, when Dinozzo is long gone and forgotten?"

"Me?"

She just looks at him long and hard, her brows raised until he grins and grabs her hand.

"Fine," he sighs dramatically, all real fire gone, replaced by tenderness and a mischievous smirk. "I will be nice to the old man and help him find his prisoner and not get upset when you help him or when he flirts with you."

She's inclined to make a smart comment and bug him a little more, but she knows this is a concession for him, and he's making it without much fuss, so she decides to let it go and just rewards him with a squeeze of his hand.

"Thank you."

The hand in hers squeezes back.

"You're welcome." She's turning away to park the car when he starts speaking again: "But I reserve the right to mock his movie references and retaliate when he insults my hair."

She laughs and puts the car in park.

"Done. Mock away."

* * *

Hours later, they're making their way out of the mission at the end of the day. Tony is heading for the airport to fly home and Kensi is silently trailing behind him, waiting for Deeks to catch up and head home for a walk with Monty and a box of pizza.

"You two having a little lovers' quarrel?" Tony cuts in to her mental plans for the evening as he sees her glancing at her phone and then at the empty space behind her.

"We are not having a quarrel."

"Not denying the lovers part, though."

She's saved from having to answer by Deeks appearing in the doorway and then at her side.

She has to smile as he reaches over to take her hand as the three of them walk toward the cars. He really has been good with Dinozzo through the rest of the day, and he is, after all _part_ Neanderthal, so she has to expect a little bit of the he-man exhibition. She finds she really doesn't mind being claimed as his.

Dinozzo doesn't miss it, and reaches out to slap Deeks on the shoulder.

"Way to go, dude!" At Deeks' puzzled look, Dinozzo continues, "I suspected there was a thing there," he nods to their hands and doesn't quite understand why they share a secret smile, "but I wasn't quite sure if you'd acted on it. How long did it take you two?"

Deeks narrows his eyes, wondering why it matters, but answers anyway.

"Four years?" It's a statement, but it comes out sounding like a question.

"I think you've set a record there."

Some indefinable emotion passes over Dinozzo's face, and then is gone before Kensi can really understand what it is.

"A record for what?

"NCIS agency romances are notoriously slow to get off the ground," Dinozzo explains, as if _NCIS Agency Romances _are normal things that have been extensively studied.

For the first time in his conversations with Dinozzo, Deeks turns serious, dragging his hand across the back of his neck as he speaks.

"We must be ahead of the curve 'cuz I'm LAPD, not NCIS" Deeks quips, but then he turns serious: "We just… we see enough of the bad stuff, you know? When you find something really good, you've got to grab it and hold on tight." He doesn't tell Dinozzo that Kensi is the first _something good_ that he feels like he's every really had a hold on. Something tells him Dinozzo gets it, though, and for the first time that day, he feels a sort of kinship with the man.

Something sad and rueful passes over Tony's face, this time too obvious to hide, and Kensi somehow knows that he's thinking of his own _something good._ She wonders if she was a coworker, his partner, if she died in the line of duty, if she just moved on before they had a chance.

"And you two are _really good_?" Tony asks, though it's more of a statement than a question.

Kensi allows herself to be pulled into Deeks side and feels his lips press to her temple.

"Yeah. We are."

If Tony's smile is a little sad as he reaches out to say goodbye, it only adds extra meaning to the handshake that is warm and heavy with meaning. When he speaks, his words are simple, light, almost joking, by they are laced with a thousand words he has not said, a story he has not told.

"Seriously, guys," he says, gripping Deeks' hand and looking him straight in the eye, trying to communicate something much deeper, "Good for you."

* * *

_AN: I really didn't plan on Ziva references popping up here, but she just wanted in. The original NCIS has become totally boring to me since Ziva left—I really do like Ellie, but it's just not the same. With Tony hanging out with Kensi and Deeks this episode, it just seemed like she would have to be on his mind._


	34. Trust

_AN: This has been floating around in my head ever since 7x06, "Unspoken," aired last week. I'd planned to have it up over the weekend, but it just didn't get finished up until now. I'd love to hear what you think in the reviews- I've got a tag to "The Unlocked Mind" knocking around in my head, and reviews would definitely inspire me to get in on paper faster. :) _

* * *

"Hey Deeks?"

"Hmmm?" He hums noncommittally from where he's scrolling through his phone. "Yeah?"

They're sitting in the car getting ready to leave the scene of the warehouse explosion, but she sits still and lets the silence drag until he looks up at her questioningly.

"Me too."

Confused, his head cocks slightly to the right as he squints at her.

"Me three?" He guesses, grinning impishly.

That gentle, affectionate smile spreads across her lips as she shakes her head, the one that he's pretty sure is just for him, and he begins to understand that she's trying to say something serious.

"Me too," she repeats, she twitches her head toward the building they just left and clarifies: "in there."

Bits of their conversation flit through his mind, but her voice cuts them off.

Reaching her hand across the console, she laces her fingers through his. "I trust you. You're my partner. If you were accused of something, I'd stand by you, no matter what, even if it looked bad. If you did it for the right reasons, I'd protect you."

The silence between them in the car is heavy with unspoken meanings. They both know this isn't really hypothetical, like his words inside had been. They both know that there may be a day coming when the vow she made just now will be tested.

"I trust you," she repeats.

When he finds his voice, it's only a rough whisper.

"I love you."

They both know his _I love you_ is code for a dozen other things he can't, or won't, say at the moment.

In lieu of a reply, she leans across the center console and presses her lips to his. Her kiss breathes freedom into his constricted chest and hope into the part of him that's becoming desolate over what he thinks could be coming. With her lips on his, he can feel the future looming bright again. How he loves this woman.

Her kiss doesn't stop at a chaste peck, and they're well on their way to seriously making out on government time when he pulls back reluctantly, a smile firmly back on his face as his fingers linger on her skin.

"I thought you had a rule about this?" He asks, trailing the fingers of his right hand through her hair, his lips hovering close to hers.

She has the grace to blush, knowing that this time she can't argue that she has the better workplace boundaries.

He grins, pressing back toward her so his lips brush hers softly while he speaks. "You know I like it when you break the rules."

His words are playful, but he kisses her again, slowly, deeply, reverently, trying to convey just how much her faith means to him.

They soon reluctantly pull back and move to go, both keenly aware that this really isn't the time for this. There is still truth to be discovered, Sam to support, bad guys to put away. For now, their time is not their own.

"Kens?"

Her names catches her by surprise as she moves to buckle her seatbelt and start the engine. When she looks up at him, Deeks speaks again, voice rough with need, gratitude, love, and the thousand other emotions she inspires in him.

"Thank you."


	35. The Best Part

_AN: This is my tag to this week's 7x07, "An Unlocked Mind." I loved that last Densi scene, but my brain must have felt like it wasn't quite finished, since this has been writing itself in my mind ever since Monday. Love to hear what you think in the reviews... hinthint._

* * *

There's a pot of pasta bubbling on the stove and he's in the middle of chopping vegetables for dinner when it all crashes in on him and he spins to drag her off her perch on the counter and press her against the fridge, burying his face in her neck and clutching her as close as humanly possible.

He knows that she had been waiting for something more profound from him earlier in the boatshed, but it had all be too fresh, to raw to talk about yet. He hadn't been ready to admit just how scared he had been for her, how much it had shaken him to find her collapsed on the floor in unfamiliar lingerie, unable to move and barely able to speak.

The whole experience had shaken her deeply, too. He can tell from her silence and the set of her shoulders, the way she clings to him now, drawing him into her with an urgency that matches his own.

"I learned that I couldn't handle it if anything happened to you," he murmurs into her neck. "I can't lose you."

It's been almost a year since she took his hand on that skating rink. He's had a taste now of life with her, really _with _her, but that's all it feels like—just a _taste_—not nearly enough. He wants the full course, the sweet and the bitter and the vibrant and the bland that will make up the next fifty years of life with her. They've had close calls before, pulled each other out of bad situations, but nothing has come close to this feeling in the almost-year since she grabbed his hand on that skating rink and they went all in.

He draws his head up and tucks hers under his chin, whispering rough _I love you_s into her hair through the catch in his throat, curving his body around hers as if physically surrounding her with himself will allow him to keep her safe. If only he could keep her there all the time.

A year ago, he wouldn't have believed that it could get harder to see her in jeopardy, that he could love her more, need her more, or want to protect her more than he did then. Somehow, he does. He is finding that loving someone like this means that every day is a little bit _more; _ every day it means a little bit more, gives a little bit more, requires a little bit more from him. He has discovered that loving her means moments of desperate fear and moments of unparalleled happiness. He has learned that needing someone that much is both a vulnerability and a strength.

He's wondering if it's too soon to buy a ring.

They spend long minutes kissing tenderly and murmuring soft reassurances to each other until the clatter and fizz of the pasta boiling over on the stove brings them back to reality with a laugh.

"I should probably feed you," he mumbles in her ear as he moves and reaches one arm to turn the pasta down, leaving the other wrapped around her waist. Touch seems as essential as breath for a long time after that; she rests her hands at his waist and her cheek on his back as he puts the finishes dinner, both giggling as they shuffle awkwardly together around the kitchen, putting the finishing touches on their meal, and then hold hands across the table as they eat.

* * *

They're lying curled together later, bodies still tucked tightly into each other, when he speaks.

"You know, I think if I hadn't already known they were creeps before I went in there, I'd still have known it was bull the moment we stepped out of those vans."

"Please." She retorts, "they manipulate and take advantage of people for a living. Hundreds of intelligent people have been brainwashed by their lies. How do you know you couldn't have been caught up?"

He rolls to lean over her, studying the play of the light and shadows on her face and the faint blush that rises at his scrutiny,

"That line? 'welcome to the best part of your life'?" He lifts his right hand to run his fingers along her face and into the hair at her temple, eyes tracing the lines of her browbones, her cheekbones, and her lips again before he finishes.

"I'm already living the best part of my life."


	36. Warm

_AN: This is just a belated tag to last week's "The Long Goodbye." I'm just starting to process a story-reaction to the ending of last night's episode..._

_Reviews much appreciated. _

* * *

Before Kensi and Talia even make it out of the building, plans for ice cream turn into plans for deliciously greasy pub food, followed by beer, then finally followed by ice cream. Supper time has long since passed unobserved, and their stomachs are rumbling to notify them of this fact. After the weeks Kensi has had, girls' night out has a definite appeal. However, she discovers quickly that there's a certain boy who isn't so keen on being left out of everyone's plans for the evening. The texts start rolling in while she's still following Talia's taillights toward the pub.

_Callen hates me._

It's rapidly followed by another before she has even had the chance to decide if she's going to reply or not.

_He won't even get a beer with me._

She laughs at that and decides he's just feeling melodramatic and can handle the rejection. She shoots him back a _poor baby _and lets him know about their change in plans for the evening as she heads in to meet Talia at the table she's claimed.

It's nice, she decides, to hang out with other women in law enforcement, who understand the challenges and hilarities of spending all her days in a testosterone-and-adrenalin-saturated workplace. It's especially nice now that she doesn't feel like she has to be constantly staking a claim on her man, since it seems that Talia has turned her flirtatious energy toward Callen who, surprisingly, seems like a more willing recipient. She thinks maybe, if Talia keeps her hands off Deeks, they could be friends.

Her phone is silent for a little while as they eat and laugh and compare stories, and then the texts start coming in again, her phone vibrating in her pocket every few minutes through the end of the game they catch on the pub's bigscreen. She doesn't reply to any of them, but she checks them and bites back smiles as they pile up.

_Monty wants to know when you're coming home._

_Baby?_

_I'm going to finish your twinkie stash out of sheer boredom if you don't get home soon._

_Are you almost here?_

_Your twinkies are gone. _

_Monty is really worried about you. He thinks you've abandoned us._

_He could probably use some reassurance._

_He's listening to Tori Amos again. _

_We're out of chocolate chips. _

_You're supposed to leave those for me to cook with, not eat them out of the bag. _

_We are also out of beer. _

_There are weird people at the grocery store at 10pm. _

She snorts at that one, knowing there must be a story there that she will hear in the morning. Talia sends her a questioning look and Kensi passes her the phone with the stack of random texts in view.

Talia scrolls through them, shaking her head as she goes, and raises her eyebrows knowingly as she passes it back to Kensi.

"He loves you."

Kensi blushes and looks down, but smiles and doesn't try to deny it.

"Yeah. He does."

* * *

Later, as the eat their ice cream, her phone vibrates again:

_The bed is really cold._

After that there are no more buzzes, so she assumes that he's managed to survive the cold bed and fall asleep.

They debate finding somewhere to go dancing for a while, but call it a night after the ice cream, deciding they'll invite Callen and Deeks along for another night out sometime soon.

* * *

Deeks is snoring on the couch with Monty's head on his thigh when she quietly slips through the door late that evening.

He stirs and sits up at the sound of the door closing, blinking at her owlishly.

"Hey," he rumbles in that rough, half-asleep voice that she has come to love.

"Hey," she replies. "I thought you were in bed a while ago?"

"It was cold."

It comes out sounding a little like a whine, but the faintest blush creeps under his beard as he admits that he doesn't like going to bed without her there. They're not usually quite so clingy, but they've both been feeling a little needier than usual with everything that has gone on these last couple weeks. It will probably get old eventually, but for now it's still warm and sweet and fuzzy in the pit of her stomach, and exactly what both of them need.

She melts.

"I made you cookies," he informs her in that slow, sleepy voice as she pulls him up from his place on the couch and slips her arms around him for a warm hug. His sleepy form is warm and heavy against her as he returns her embrace. She can smell the hints of vanilla and chocolate and sugar still lingering in the air and murmurs her appreciation into his neck before she draws back to smile at this adorable, disheveled man that she loves.

"Come on, sleepyhead," she says gently, tugging him toward the stairs. "Let's go warm the cold bed up."


	37. Hope

_AN: As my brain processed possible scenarios for the outcome of the IA investigation of Deeks, there was only one "what if" that really inspired me to write it_—_one that I don't think is actually plausible in this situation, but which wanted to be written. _

_What if LAPD used Deeks' arrest and the investigation against him to force him back undercover—a cover that would cost him much more than the investigation ever could? _

_This is my take on the immediate aftermath of such a cover. I know it's not a plausible speculation for tomorrow's episode, but I'd love to hear what you think in the reviews. _

* * *

"I think you should go."

Five simple words, but they gut him. Cold, hollow blackness creeps over him as he stands in the middle of the gym staring at the woman he loves. The woman who doesn't love him anymore.

He hadn't realized until that moment how completely she had been his hope through all this mess. Hope that they could have a life after this. Hope that she could forgive him. Hope that he hadn't lost it all.

Now, suddenly, the hope is stripped away and it empties him of all but a desperate bleakness.

Defeated, he turns and numbly does as she asked.

He doesn't blame her. He hates himself; he can't expect anything more from her when he can't even find it in himself. He lied to the woman he loves. Again. If it had just been that he had been accused of crimes, he has no doubt that she would be by his side, in his arms, right now, having fought tooth and nail to exonerate him.

It was so much more than that—some of it of his own doing and some of it beyond his control. He knowingly caused her pain. He intentionally used their relationship against her. He lied and left her out of the loop and used his knowledge of her to keep her away. He's done technically worse things undercover, and it had been the best plan for completing his mission, but that doesn't mean he lets himself off the hook. He's never hated his job more than he does today. It's never cost him so much.

Stepping outside the door, he leans his forehead against the wall, takes a deep shuddering breath as the reality of what just happened washes over him, and slams his clenched fist in the wall, barely feeling the impact with the stucco or the skin on his knuckles breaking.

Sam finds him that way, bleeding and shaking with unknown emotion, held up by the wall.

Silently, he reaches out to land a powerful hand on Deeks' shoulder, squeezing gently. The blank expression on Deeks' face doesn't change, and Sam reaches the other arm out and draws him to his chest, cradling his head on his shoulder the way he would a small child. The silent, shattered man comes without resistance.

Neither of them speak for an interminable moment, until Sam hears Deeks' quiet voice.

"She hates me, Sam. Kensi hates me."

The only words Sam can think of to describe Deeks' voice are _dark _and _desolate. _He doesn't get a chance to respond, because speaking the words aloud breaks Deeks out of his stupor and he shoves himself back and whirls blindly for the door.

* * *

He winds up on the beach, not even sure how he got there. Stumbling into the surf at the edge of the sand, he screams, a wordless, shapeless sound of fury and pain, as if, if he screams loud enough, it will release some of the agony packed in his chest.

His bloody knuckles seep a red stain into the wet sand, and he watches it spread blankly.

He's been tortured, beaten, broken before. None of it compares to the knowledge that the woman he loves hates him.

* * *

Sam watches him go, sick with worry. He knows exactly the frame of mind that Deeks is in right now—it's the kind where he goes and does something rash and dangerous and makes it all worse for himself—if he even gets out of it alive. He's had those moods himself. Nothing good comes of them.

Pushing through the doors, he finds Kensi propped up by the wall inside, shaking with anger or hurt or confusion or some swirling hurricane of all three and then some.

Reaching out, he tucks her under the same arm that had just comforted the man she gutted. Unlike him, she keeps herself stiff and separate.

She's silent, not pulling away, but not accepting his embrace either. He gives her the silence for a few moments before he speaks quietly:

"I know you're angry. I know you're hurt. But if you ever want to have the option of fixing this, you need to give that man some hope, _now."_

Not looking up at him, she tries to pull away.

"I just need some time... to figure out if I can get past this. What he did...I don't know..." she trails off, unsure.

She finally looks up at him, her dark, striking eyes full of all the pain and anger and betrayal and insecurities that she's usually so good at hiding. Deeks isn't the only one reeling from this, and he wonders momentarily if they're both too broken to put any of this back together. They he remembers the way they look at each other, the way the fight for each other, the way they need each other.

"The only thing you need to know right now, Kensi, is that there's a _chance_. If you know that much, if you can see a chance the two of you could get past this, that's what he needs to know."

Kensi glances up at him, and he can see the question in her eyes. He knows she doesn't understand just where Deeks' mind is going right now, but he does. He's been there, and it's a dark and dangerous place.

"Maybe he's going to go drown himself in a bottle and hope he never comes out," he says softly. "Maybe he's going to go to Bates and ask for the deepest, darkest, longest cover he can find. But I guarantee you, Kens, whatever he does is not going to have a good ending."

No matter how justifiable her feelings right now are, no matter that Deeks is not blameless in any of this, no matter how long it might be before either of them are ready to move forward, he knows she holds all the power in this impossible situation, and he knows that she will look back someday and regret it if she fails to see just where Deeks' mind is taking him right now. He doesn't want to scare her, but he has an uncanny feeling that the next few hours are going to shape a lot of the future, for good or for bad.

"When a man thinks that the woman he loves hates him, and he blames himself," he starts, looking her in the eye and trying to impress on her the gravity of what he's saying, "there's not much he won't do to escape from that feeling, Kensi. I'm not asking you to forgive him right now. I'm not asking you to pretend that nothing's wrong. I'm just saying that hearing that you don't hate him and that there's a chance that you could still love him are going to make all the difference in the world today."

Her weight falls against him as she finally lets herself go and accepts the comfort of his shoulder.

"I don't know _how _I feel right now, Sam. I don't know what to think or what to say to him," she says to his feet, "but I know that I'm not ready for him to just walk back into my life like nothing's happened. I'm so angry and so confused...I'm not ready to forgive him yet. I don't even know if I'm ever going to be ready to forgive him."

"Then just tell him that. Not knowing is hope, Kensi, and that's exactly what he needs. He needs to know that there's even a chance he can win you back, that you'll at least let him try to make it right. No promises, just a little bit of hope."

She stares at him, asking him without words if he really believes there's hope for them. Gently, he squeezes her shoulder: "when you choose to love each other, Kensi, really love each other, there's always hope."

* * *

He's making his way up the beach, blindly stumbling through the sand to where he assumes his must have parked a car. His brain is reeling, frantically searching for an idea of something, _anything _to muffle the loop that's running in his head, slicing through his heart.

_Kensi doesn't love you anymore. Kensi can't stand the sight of you. Kensi hates you. Kensi's never going to be yours again. Kensi. Kensi. Kensi. Kensi. _Her name is a throb with every beat of his heart and a knife in his lungs at every breath.

And then, on a throb of her name, she is there in front of him, hesitant and tear-stained and still so heartrendingly beautiful and so _not his. _

She looks at him, his eyes wild and lost, and suddenly knows that, no matter long the journey back might be, there is hope.

"I didn't mean it," she tells him softly, knowing that she could be talking about any number of the things she said during their confrontation today, things about them being over and about hating him and even, she realizes even as she is speaking, about not knowing if she could forgive him.

It doesn't seem to matter to him which one she's talking about.

"You should," he finally spits out. "You should mean it. You should get as far away from me as you can and stay there and not look back."

"No," she says, her voice and her heart gaining resolve as if in response to his resistance, "I shouldn't."

Suddenly decided, all the hesitancy disappears. The hurt and the anger don't all go, but they take second place as she makes the choice to move forward, to choose to love.

"We should talk," she says, stretching out her hand and silently daring him to take it.

She watches his fingers curl around hers, the feel of his hand in hers is tentative, as if he doesn't dare believe that she's offering it. Then his hand crushes hers in a grip so strong that it might hurt if it didn't feel so necessary, so welcome.

When she looks up at him, she's relieved to see that his eyes have lost the frantic, haunted look and, instead, they meet hers, wild with a blaze of a new emotion called hope.


	38. Joy

Potholder in hand, Roberta Deeks pokes her head around the kitchen doorway to call Martin and Kensi to eat for the Christmas Eve dinner she's just finished putting on the table, but the sight that greets her makes the words catch in her throat.

He's grinning as he lunges to catch Kensi's hand and draw her into her arms, and she's laughingly resisting, Monty dancing at their feet and trying to decide who to side with. Martin's long arms wrap around her waist and one of her hands comes up to tenderly brush his hair away from his face before landing at the back of his neck. In the glow of the Christmas lights, love shining from their faces, Monty at their feet and presents under the tree, they look like a Christmas card—like the TV advertisements she and Marty used to watch and wonder if anybody actually had Christmases like that.

With his forehead pressed to Kensi's as he whispers something—probably silly or suggestive, if she knows her son—he's positively radiating joy, and her mother's heart swells to bursting. Kensi playfully dodges his kiss and tucks her face into his neck, and the look on Martin's face is something she's never seen before, something full of awe and adoration and peace and contentment and all the other things that should go with Christmas that they've never really had.

She's not sure how she did it, but she raised a good man, and now she has the privilege of seeing him a truly happy man.

There's always been a nagging worry in her mind that her marriage to his father had damaged his perception of love and marriage and his ability and desire to commit. She knows he has demons just like she does. He's never invited a girl to join them for Christmas before. She's met a few—mostly by accident—but never one that made him smile like this, never one he spoke about with the reverence she hears when he says Kensi's name. _Committed_ is too small a word for what he is with Kensi.

She should have known that he needed someone strong and fierce. Someone to fight for him and alongside him. Someone with steel inside of her.

That woman of steel is currently giggling and stretching back in his arms as she reaches into the box nearby for a handful of packing peanuts to throw in his face. Their words have been murmured too quietly for her to hear, but their laughter bounces off the walls and reaches her, clear and ringing joyfully. His careworn face is an innocent little boy's again as he laughs and traps her to his chest.

This is all she's ever wanted for him, and more than she dared hope for—that the woman who is his strength is also the woman who is his joy, his partner and his playmate, his love and his friend.

In an ideal world, he should have learned that love and partnership from his parents, but she was young and foolish and made choices she will always regret. Seeing him so happy feels a little bit like redemption for her own past failings, knowing he hasn't repeated his parents' mistakes, discovering that he knows how to love like this.

She is about to become the impatient mother hoping for a daughter-in-law and for grandkids. She vows then and there to play nice with Kensi's mom. The last thing they should have to worry about is whether or not their moms can get along, and it's the one thing she has any bit of control over. She'll do anything for her son, even share the kitchen with a smile, and it might not be a bad idea to have an ally in the quest for grandchildren.

Maybe it's time their family grew a little.

* * *

_AN: I'm working on a tag to Cancel Christmas which is really the prequel to this, but this one interrupted while I was writing and that one isn't quite ready yet. I like Mama Deeks, and I get the sense that she and Kensi did a lot of bonding in Internal Affairs. _


	39. At Home

_"That's not a kiss! That doesn't count as a kiss, it's like a fourth of a kiss, it's like a fraction of a kiss!" (Deeks)_

_"Well, then you'll get the other fraction at home." (Kensi)_

_7x11, "Cancel Christmas"_

* * *

At home.

They might be the most beautiful words he's ever heard.

_At home_ means she's coming home with him. _At home_ means he will get to claim the remaining balance of that kiss, with interest compounded by the minute.

_At home_ means his worst fear lies dead and buried. She's still looking at him with those gorgeous loving eyes, and the revelation of his life wasn't even a surprise. If she knows—if she figured it out—that means she knew the truth even as she fought to free him. She knew the truth when she launched herself into his arms. She knew the truth when she took him home and kissed all the bruises better.

She knew the truth and the way she looks at him hasn't changed.

He takes his first deep breath in what seems like a lifetime, an incredible sense freedom racing through him. There have been hundreds of times when he was pretty sure that this woman was going to be the death of him. All those times, he was wrong.

This woman is the life of him. She is the breath and the future and all the reasons for waking up in the morning.

He slips his hand across the console and offers it to her, palm up, waiting for her long fingers to find his.

There's a rule. They're not supposed to do this on the clock, but kisses are out of the question—for now—and there's no way he can sit next to her right now and not touch her.

He's held her hand hundreds of times by now, but nothing compares to the way he feels this time when she laces her fingers tightly with his and rests their clasped hands on her warm thigh.

For the first time in his life, all his Christmas wishes have come true.

Almost one year ago, they started their first year together with a lot of brokenness still healing. He can't help but smile at the prospect of starting year two with a clean slate—strong and healthy and with nothing hanging between them, his hand at home in hers.

* * *

At home that night, he shuts the door behind them and leans back on it, pulling her into his chest and wrapping his arms around her.

This is all he wants tonight, all he needs. Just to stand here with her in his arms and feel her breath on his neck and know that _he still gets to feel this_. Her Christmas decorations are still mixed up with his, and they're going to stay there. She'll still be there taking up all four quadrants of the bed tonight, and in the morning he'll wake up and make her pancakes or frittatas or anything else on earth that she wants, because she'll still be there to cook for.

He spends the evening tucked between her and the back of the couch, running his fingers over her hair, her arm, her back, reverently memorizing the feel of her. It's a while into the silent night when she whispers in his ear what he already knows.

"You're forgiven."

Her actions have told him that already, but the words are powerful, rushing through him, freeing captive fears and leaving light and warmth in their wake. He's not so naïve as to believe that she isn't hurt that he kept this from her, but she's made the decision to love him and stick by him despite his past sins, and man, does it feel good to know that someone loves him enough to do that. That _she_ loves him enough to do that.

He used to think that he was the one that believed in them the most, that she wasn't quite as sure of what they could be together, but he's been discovering this past year that he was wrong. So very wrong. She believes in them, in him, more than he ever dared to hope for, more than he could have expected from anyone.

The proof is that she's lying in his arms right now, soft and warm and still his.

And one day—lately he's been dreaming of that "one day" more and more—he's going to put a ring on her finger and make this all permanent. The film of lies that has always been in the way when he tried to envision the future is gone now, and his imagination runs wild with images. She'll walk down the aisle toward him in a white dress and put a gold band on his finger. There will be a blue plus sign on a white stick and her belly will swell with his child. There will be little finger-painted ornaments on the tree with all the others, and stockings hung by the mantle with care.

All of that is in the future, and the future is suddenly a beautiful thing.

But, he thinks as he peers down at the woman dozing in his arms—the one he's pretty sure he doesn't deserve but who loves him anyway—the present is a pretty beautiful thing, too.

* * *

_AN: Roberta, Julia, and my muse are conspiring on a follow-up to Chapter 38 (Joy), which will hopefully be out soon. They're being a little stubborn. _


	40. Conspiracy

_AN: This is really sort of the sequel to Chapter 38, "Joy." In my mind, chapters 38, 39, and 40 all happen in the same universe. Chronologically, 39 would be first, 38 second, and 40 third. I know, I'm good at confusing everything..._

* * *

Christmas morning arrives before either Deeks or Kensi is ready for it.

All the gifts are under the tree, the house is the cleanest it's been since the move, Monty is freshly washed, Christmas breakfast has been cleared away, and they're in their festive finest, but they're both staring at the door, simultaneously hoping it doesn't ring and wishing it would so they can just get this over with.

There is a new sense of anticipation this year, but there's also a very real new anxiety. Last year their relationship had been brand new at Christmas; there had been no time for special plans or gifts or other coupley Christmas things—they'd barely become a couple by the time the holiday was upon them. This year, they've had the chance to plan and anticipate. They've decorated the house together, hunted down the perfect gifts, baked rather oddly-shaped Christmas cookies, and curled up in front of cheesy Christmas movies. It's the first year there's been time for the expectations and excitement to build.

It's also the first year they've had to deal with bringing their mothers into the equation for the holiday. Their mothers who have never met. Together. At one house. Just the four of them. They're all heading for Sam's later for dinner, but first Roberta and Julia will arrive at Deeks' house so the four of them can exchange gifts privately and spend the morning together. The prospect has both of them a little bit terrified.

Finally, all too soon, the doorbell rings and suddenly Roberta Deeks is there, arms loaded with gifts and open for hugs, bustling her way in and depositing packages and kisses as she goes. She's just emptied her arms of all her burdens and is drawing them in for 'real hugs' when the doorbell rings again and Kensi and Deeks tense. They exchange a nervous look that says _maybe we should have just all met at Sam's. _

Deeks swings the door open and Julia's smiling face greets the three inside. Unfortunately, her arrival is met with silence.

For all that they've agonized and stressed over this moment, they never actually thought to talk about something as mundane as who would make the introductions when the moment came. There's a moment of silence while they both wait for the other to do it, and then they both stutter to life at the same time.

"Thi—"

"Mom—"

They screech to a halt again, exchanging rapid, panicked looks as Deeks scratches at the side of his head nervously.

"Ju—" "Ca—" They start and stop again.

Julia Feldman smiles at them and then at Roberta, and Roberta stretches out her hand while both women chuckle quietly.

"I'm Roberta Deeks, Marty's mother."

Julia shakes her hand as they ignore their gaping children.

"Julia Feldmen, Kensi's mother."

The women stand and size each other up for brief seconds that feel like years, and then sly smiles cross their faces. Roberta Deeks takes in Julia's dark, exotic looks and sleek wardrobe compared to her own all-American-mom style. They're most certainly different, but she sees the sparkle in Julia's eye as she greets the children, the way she clings to Kensi and looks up at Martin with admiration and hope, and the glance she sneaks at Kensi's left hand.

They're going to get along just fine.

"Well! That went...well." Deeks stutters, as they close the door and turn inward. "Welcome to casa de Deeks, Julia. Come on in and have a seat. Kensi and I will get you something to drink. Coffee? Hot cider? Tea? Cocoa?"

* * *

The morning goes more smoothly than they could have ever hoped for, and dinner at the Hanna house leaves them all stuffed, but after an active afternoon and a quiet evening gathered back at Deeks' house, by late evening they, shockingly, are actually starting to feel hungry again.

Deeks suggests they order Chinese, which suggestion Roberta promptly rejects with the declaration that she'll just "whip something up" for a light late supper.

To Deeks' shock, her next words are directed to Julia Feldman:

"Julia, perhaps you'd like to join me."

As Julia smiles and assents, Deeks' eyes whip back and forth between them in confusion. Who is this woman and where is his mother?

A little alarmed, Deeks starts to offer, "Kensi and I can—"

"Stay right there and relax," his mother finishes for him while Julia nods in agreement.

Deeks nervously watches them go, startled into silence by this unexpected development. He manages to distract himself for a few minutes, but his eyes keep straying back toward the kitchen.

Finally, he gives up all pretense of not watching them and cranes his neck to see into the kitchen, then pops it back before he can be spotted.

"What are they doing!?" He exclaims in frustration.

Kensi furrows her brow: "Are they arguing?"

"No! They're grinning and talking and I can't hear anything they're saying!"

"...and this is a bad thing?" Kensi guesses hesitantly.

Deeks stretches out to catch another glimpse into the kitchen, where he sees Roberta and Julia with their heads bent together over the counter, smiling over a mixing bowl in a way that he instantly labels _conspiratorial. _

Snapping his head back and tipping toward her to avoid detection, he half-whispers, "They're up to something, Kens! I can feel it."

"Are your spidey-senses tingling?" she teases him.

Narrowing his eyes at her, he responds in mock affront: "I'm a detective. It's my job to detect things, and there is definitely something strange going on in there."

Kensi laughs. "They're making dinner, Deeks, not plotting world domination."

"Not world domination maybe, just possibly the rest of our lives."

"At least they seem to like each other," Kensi offers, tucking herself into his side in an attempt to quiet him.

"Yeah," Deeks snorts, "I think they like each other a little bit too much for my comfort."

"Relax, Deeks. It's one day. They can't cause that much trouble in one day."

Deeks begins to nod and settle into her until his eyes widen in horror.

"What if they exchange phone numbers and become friends behind our backs?" he shoots back at her in a loud whisper. "Then they have all the time they want."

Kensi laughs at his paranoia.

"Deeks, If the worst thing that happens today is that our moms become friends and want to have lunch together once in a while, I think we will survive it."

* * *

It's weeks later when she first begins to think that she might have to eat her words. She's just hung up from a phone call with her mother, and their conversation is still swirling in her head as Deeks asks how her mom is.

"She's fine. She can't stop talking about 'what a nice young man Marty is' and how much she likes you."

Deeks grins.

"I knew I liked her."

"She also hinted that she wouldn't mind if our New Years _celebration_ resulted in a grandchild approximately nine months from now."

Shock registers on his face as his blue eyes go wide and he nearly drops the plate in his hands—partly because he can't believe Julia Feldman said such a thing, and partly because he can't believe Kensi is talking about having children with him as if it's no big deal.

"She actually said that?"

"Not exactly, but it was pretty clear what she meant."

He doesn't tell her that his mom has been dropping hints about diamonds and Valentine's Day and babies. He also hasn't told her that there's a ring display in the window of the jewelry store next to their favorite Thai place, or that he stops and stares at it every time he picks up their takeout alone.

* * *

For most of his adult life, Deeks has been grateful for the fact that his mother is not one to nag him about getting married and having children.

At least, she wasn't before she met Kensi Blye. Now, suddenly, she seems to have weddings and grandchildren on her mind an awful lot lately. So much so that she's bringing up the possibility of moving closer to them in order to be available for babysitting duty, an idea that seems to come out of the blue while they're on the phone one week, and he barely manages to choke out a question about what on earth brought up that idea through his shock.

"Well, Julia and I had lunch last week, and we've just been thinking that it would be nice if we were both nearby to be able to help out when—"

"Wait a second, Mama," Deeks interrupts, "You and Julia had lunch. As in, Julia Feldman? Kensi's mother?"

"Well, yes."

"How did _that_ happen?"

"We have a lot in common, Martin. Our children have dangerous jobs—the same dangerous job—and it's nice to have a friend who I can talk about that with."

He has to give her that one. And there's no way he can fault her wanting to have someone to talk to. But darn, does it scare him to know that their mothers are having lunch without supervision.

"And besides," she breaks into his train of thought, "we could share the same grandchildren some day."

* * *

"I'm thinking of redoing the guest bedroom," Julia Feldmen announces one night as she and Kensi are cleaning up dinner.

Kensi _hmms_ noncommittally, not sure why this is relevant to her.

"I'm thinking something softer. For the future. Something neutral and child friendly."

Kensi coughs and then realizes that she's not even surprised anymore at where this conversation is heading.

"And what possible reason could you have for that? Are there children in your life that I don't know about?"

"Well, every child should have a room at Grammy's house. I don't want you and Martin to ever worry about having anyone to look after your children. Roberta and I will take care of anything you need."

Kensi sighs, not even bothering to try redirect this conversation. "I'm sure you will."

"Did you know that you and Martin both had great-grandmothers named Ella? Isn't that a lovely, timeless, name for a little girl?"

* * *

Kensi collapses on the couch next to Deeks with a groan.

"You were right."

He cocks her head at her in mock shock.

"Wow. And what was I right about?"

"Our mothers are friends. They're having lunch together without us and naming their future grandchildren."

This time, he's the one who's nonchalant about it. There's a ring in that jewelry store window that he just can't keep his eyes away from, a corresponding lump growing in his savings account, and dream he keeps having that features a little girl with blue eyes and brown curls. They're not ready yet, but every conversation they have like this brings them one step closer, and their mothers seem determined to ensure that these conversations happen frequently.

Kensi was right, too, he figures—if their biggest family problem is that their mothers are too friendly for their liking, they've got it pretty good.

"Don't worry about it," he says, slinging his arm around her and drawing her close, "I'm sure they'll let us have the final say."

* * *

_AN: I started this piece without having any real idea where it was headed, I just knew that Julia and Roberta were going to hit it off swimmingly. I'm not sure what exactly I think of it, so I'd love to hear your opinions in the reviews. _

_When I posted the last chapter, there was some kind of error on ff that made it so I couldn't read the reviews. Since I don't get them sent to me via email, I had to wait DAYS to actually read them. It was torture. :) But it made it all that much sweeter to read all of your kind words when I finally did get to see them. I'm so thankful for all of you who take the time to review and let me know what you think, both those of you who review regularly and those of you who left a note for the first time. Thanks! _


	41. Choose

_AN: Just some of my hopeful speculation for 7x14, "Come Back." Minor spoilers below, just from the press release._

* * *

Kensi Blye stops in the doorway of the safe house to absorb the strange scene before her; the man she loves is sitting on the sofa across from the man she once loved. The very air is awkward and the sight is surreal, as if she's seeing her past sitting next to her future.

One is everything she always thought she wanted, the other is everything she never knew she needed, and they're both sitting there staring at each other, saying nothing.

It almost seems strange now to feel so removed from the emotional turmoil that would have marked this situation just a few years ago. Afghanistan had been confusing on so many levels; suddenly these two men had both been in her life at the same time, and the physical, emotional, and mental pain and confusion had kept everything swirling and never settling for weeks afterward. But it's been a year and a half since they came home. Everything is settled now. Her life is back on solid ground and her heart has come to a lot of conclusions that it hadn't been able to reach before the upheaval that was Afghanistan finally brought closure.

She feels at peace, even this strange situation with the two of them in the same room. However, she realizes as she watches them, these two men don't know that. They have no way of knowing what she's feeling here, because she's never told either of them. She can't be sure—the later days of her captivity in Afghanistan are still hazy—but she doesn't think she said anything to Jack about Deeks as more than her partner, and she's never shared with Deeks the conclusions she's come to about Jack—perhaps because she herself had come to those conclusions so gradually that there had never been one "aha!" moment to talk about. So, now, they're both sitting there together, neither knowing how she really feels about the other.

Ignoring the tension in the air for now, she steps back into the room to inform them of the news from Hetty.

"Hetty says 'sit tight.' It could still be awhile, but it should all be over by tonight. There's supposed to be new food in the fridge, I'm going to go see what we can come up with for lunch."

Jack jumps up.

"I'll help."

Sensing that Jack's offer is more about the chance to talk to Kensi alone than about actually helping, Deeks chooses to stay put. He doesn't even realize the tension he's holding in his shoulders until Kensi shoots a secret smile at him and he deflates, smiling back.

Jack follows her into the kitchen, leaning on the counter as she starts pulling items out of the fridge. They've been in and out of this safe house for the better part of twenty-four hours now, moments of rapid action punctuating hours of relative normalcy as they wait it out. It's been odd this whole time, moments of awkwardness and moments ease, but Jack seems to have come to the conclusion that he has something to say to her now that they have a few moments alone.

"I'm glad to see you again. It's good to see you recovered."

She almost feels as if she's standing outside herself as she reciprocates the sentiment, speaking with genuine empathy but nothing more. It's good to see him alive too, but it doesn't change a thing—for her, anyway. She can tell from the way he shuffles and glances at the floor that he still has something more on his mind. When he starts speaking again, she's not really surprised by what he says.

"Being back here, in this house with you, starts to bring back all those might-have-beens, you know? It's been making we wonder if I walked away too fast last time, if maybe there was still a chance for us."

He looks at her with a smile that's only a little bit sad. "There's not, is there?"

It's phrased like a question, but he clearly knows the answer, and he clearly knows why. His eyes roll meaningfully toward the wall that hides Deeks from them, and she can't help but smile. Just the thought of him has that effect on her.

"No," she doesn't even hesitate: "There's not."

She looks at him and smiles. They share so many memories, but that's all they are—memories. They're not what she wants for the future anymore, and he deserves an honest response.

"When you left me back then, it hurt. I didn't know what to do with myself. I hurt so bad and I felt like I'd failed. I didn't think I'd ever really recover or move on. I didn't think anything could hurt that bad. In Afhanistan, I was so shocked to see you that I didn't even know how to respond." She takes a deep breath. "But I realized something after Afghanistan. It took me a while, but I realized that I'd go through that all again, if it means that I get to have him."

She can't see Deeks through the wall that separates them, but she knows he's there, probably nervously bouncing his knee, waiting for her. Loving her.

"I still care about you, Jack. I hope you make it through this alive and have a good life with people you love. But I'm not the woman who wants to marry you and share that life with you anymore."

He nods. It's nothing he wasn't already prepared to hear. It just needed to be said out loud

"He makes you happy?"

She laughs.

"He makes me crazy. And he makes me better. And yes, he makes me happy. Ridiculously happy."

* * *

Deeks is staring out the window when they step back into the room carrying plates of food and drinks, and he stops next to her when he moves to join them around the food at the coffee table. .

She knows he wants to put his arm around her. She knows he's feeling awkward and a little bit jealous and possessive, but he'll tamp it down because they're at work and he's bigger than the need to claim her as his in front of the man who feels like his rival. So he stands a little too close to her, but he doesn't touch her.

She wants him to. Things have never been as clear to her as they are today, looking at these two men together. There are no more questions about what could have been, just the certain knowledge that what _is_ is exactly what she wants, even if it took a lot of pain to get there.

Instead of bringing up the obvious elephant in the room, she just slips one arm around Deeks' waist.

"Can we order Chinese tonight? I'm craving crab rangoons and I want to eat them in my yoga pants."

It's a silent declaration to Deeks that Jack's presence doesn't change anything.

She can almost feel Deeks' mind processing all this as his hand comes up to absently run up and down her side. She's never really had a _choice_ before. Jack was long gone before Deeks came into her life. Then he came back in a stressful situation while Deeks was half a world away and disappeared again as soon as Deeks stepped back in. They were in her world together for only a matter of a few stressful hours. The choice was never really hers to make, until today.

Today, she gets to choose.

Except there's not really even a choice to make. She cares for one, but she loves the other. She's not the girl who had loved Jack Simon; that girl doesn't exist anymore. The woman she sees in the mirror now is the woman who loves Marty Deeks. Theirs is, she thinks, a grown up love, the kind that faces down ghosts and demons and doesn't falter. The kind that grows from trust and loyalty and friendship into a love you only get once.

Deeks coughs out a surprised laugh, and the smile he turns down at her holds a whole lot more than just amusement at her eating habits.

"Yeah. Sure. Just don't feed them to Monty this time. He has a shellfish allergy, and you saw what they did to him last time."

He's always wondered, in the back of his mind, if she stood in front of both of them and could choose, if she would choose him or her first love. He's pretty sure he just got the answer to that question.

* * *

He doesn't have to ask what she's thinking that night as they settle on the couch with their Chinese takeout. She sits sideways, facing him with her crab rangoons in her lap, and starts speaking as soon as she swallows her first bite.

"I choose you."

Her words hang in the air and she lets them sink in. She knows that this is important for him to know. She wants him to be sure, without a shadow of doubt, that he is her choice. He's not a second choice because she can't have what she really wants. He is exactly, exclusively, what she wants, and she wants him to know that.

"Losing Jack was hard. A lot of things with you and me, in our lives and our relationship, have been hard. But I'd do it all again if it means I get to be with you."

She watches as he carefully, deliberately, moves her food out of her lap and slides his hand up to cup the side of her face. Moments like this, when his blue eyes turn so warm and soft and dark, she thinks she could just melt into them and stay there forever. Smiling into his radiant face, she brings her hand up to tenderly brush the hair away from his eyes and repeats herself with certainty ringing in her voice.

"No hesitation. No regrets. I choose you."

* * *

_AN: I started thinking about writing something based on the synopsis released for "Come Back," and this just happened. I'm not super thrilled with it, but it's done. _

_This may be my last piece for a long time- I'm moving overseas at the end of next week, and will probably not even be able to see new episodes of NCIS:LA for many months... so, if I don't get to see "Come Back," I'll just pretend that this is what actually happened and it will make me happy._


	42. Suddenly There

_AN: It's been a while since I've posted here. Many thanks to those of you who wished me well and shared info with me as I made this move across the world. I'm feeling settled enough now that I've been starting to write again, and it feels good (and yes, I can watch NCIS:LA here). I think my eyes about popped out of my head at that last Densi scene in this week's episode (7x19, The Seventh Child), and it demanded a follow-up. I've actually been working on a post-ep for Exchange Rate, but this one wanted to be written more urgently than that one._

* * *

"…and obviously it's not as big of a commitment as…this… would be."

"Right."

When his girlfriend's eyes shift down from his and then flick away looking suspiciously wet, he realizes he might have just managed to majorly botch this conversation. So she didn't have news for him today, but what if she had? And what if one day she _does _have news to share and she hesitates because she thinks all she can expect is the bumbling panic he'd shown today?

When he thinks about it, he's not even sure _why_ he reacted the way he did. He's always wanted kids, and if he's going to have them, it's certainly going to be with Kensi, and…

…and right now life is crazy. Their jobs are crazy. They're just beginning to figure out living together and now she wants to move again, and everything is moving faster than he ever imagined, which is both awesome and a little bit terrifying. In the space of three months, they've had their first anniversary, shared their first family Christmas, moved in together, and now they're talking about kids. The first relaxed, carefree months of their relationship have moved quickly into very serious territory, where suddenly instead of thinking about today and tomorrow, he's thinking about the future.

It strikes him then, suddenly, that his hesitancy about committing to having a child with her right now could possibly be misunderstood as hesitancy about committing to a future with _her_.

_Oh, no. No, no, no. _

If there's one thing in this world that he's entirely sure he's ready to commit to, it's Kensi Marie Blye. Like white wedding and pink booties and gray hair committed. They've been having serious conversations lately—conversations he's just beginning to realize that maybe he hasn't always handled the best way. She's messy and it bothers him, yes, but messes and odd quirks and awful taste in music notwithstanding, he's going to spend the rest of his life with this woman, and if she thinks he's feeling any doubt about that, he needs to set her straight, and soon.

The reticence today, he realizes, rises partly from an almost opposite feeling—not that he's reluctant to commit to her, but that he's reluctant to share her. Maybe it's selfish, but he likes having her all to himself when they get home. He likes being able to spend lazy Sunday mornings wrapped around her in bed and to take off for the beach or dinner spontaneously, and he likes to have all of her attention. They waited so long to be together, he wants to just be _with_ her for a while before they have kids that divide their attention. He wasn't expecting this conversation to come so soon. Since when is Kensi ready for children?

A baby will change things on so many levels—not just their freedom, but also other things he's not sure they're ready to have changed yet, like their jobs and their partnership and, yes, probably their housing. This is _their_ first house together. He allowed to be a little sentimentally attached to it. There are a lot of questions that they need to ask themselves and decisions they need to make before they can responsibly be ready to have a child, decisions that will take time and thought to handle properly…_and does she really not think of their house as theirs? _He thought of it as theirs long before she technically lived there—maybe because he moved in planning from the beginning on her living there with him.

And maybe, he realizes, as non-traditional as they sometimes are, he wants to do this the traditional way. He wants to put a ring on her finger and plan a wedding with her and make her his wife without her ever having reason to doubt that he's marrying her for any reason other than that he loves her to distraction and wants to spend the rest of his life with her.

His brain manages to sweep through all this while he climbs the stairs to ops, but once he reaches the screens his rambling thoughts are brought to an abrupt halt by one of the most disturbing cases in recent memory, and he's forced to put them aside for now, though they're never far from his mind as the day wears on.

* * *

"Is it too crazy for two people to get married?"

When the words slip out of his mouth at the end of the day, he almost looks around to see where they came from.

He's pretty sure he hadn't intended to propose yet, and certainly not here, like this, but he has no desire to backpedal and take the words back.

When she stops in her tracks, he does wonder if he just made a major mistake. But if she's ready for a kid with him, then she must be ready for a life with him, right?

* * *

This time when she turns away from him with moisture in her eyes, it's for all the right reasons. He stands for just a moment, still stunned. He really hadn't planned this, but nonetheless, planned or not, he's pretty sure he just proposed. Moreover, he's pretty sure that she just said yes.

Suddenly, the only question on his mind is _why am I not touching her?_ They just got engaged—unofficially, maybe, but he's pretty sure that this is the moment he's always going to remember as the moment when she said yes. He'll buy the ring and do the beach and the sunset and the knee, just like he described so she'll know exactly what's coming, but from _this_ moment on he's going to think of her as his fiancée, and he really wants to kiss his fiancée for the first time.

Jogging the last few steps, he catches her just outside the door, swinging her around to press her to the wall beside the door, and leans down to catch her lips in a long kiss, not caring who might see or what camera might be recording this.

She just all but agreed to _marry_ him.

* * *

They venture to the beach to eat the dinner they pick up, and he figures that's another thing that would need to change if they had a baby: one of them—probably him—would need to learn to really cook.

After they eat, he sits in the sand with her settled in the circle of his arms. She seems peaceful, but he's not quite content with the way they left their conversation about babies, and the sadness and disappointment he saw in her eyes this morning still haunts him. Taking her hand, he allows his thumb to rub over the base of the still-bare fourth finger of her left hand.

"I love you. You know that, right?" he says into her hair.

Her acknowledgement and her _I love you, too_ are hummed into his shoulder and he feels the familiar swell of awe that he still feels every time she says those words.

"Kens," he draws back to turn her around to face him, "I_ love_ you. And I want to have a baby with you," he says, staring earnestly into her eyes. "Babies," he amends, "babies plural," he clarifies, suddenly sure that he wants more than just one child with this woman. "I just think maybe _now _is not the best time to start having them. I think we need to be more ready for all the ways our life will change and I just… I want you to myself for a little while longer right now, and there are some things," he pauses and allows his thumb to swipe over her ring finger again, "that I would like to do first."

"Okay," she whispers.

"Okay?" He repeats, a little surprised at her easy acquiescence.

"I know it's not the right time for a baby," she confirms, "Yes, there are times when I want it now, but I know that now is not really the time. Today just confirmed that. But I want one someday, and maybe someday soon, and I just want to know that we're on the same page on that. I want to know that if someday I do have to tell you that I'm pregnant, you'll be happy and not upset, even if it's not the timing that we planned on."

"Oh, Kens," he breathes, gathering her tighter into his arms, "any day you tell me you're going to have my baby is going to be the best day ever, even if we're not expecting it." The fact that that's even in question is a reminder of how broken they both are, how much brokenness they see in the world every day. "Our lives have a way of not going as planned, but let's make a plan anyway. For a new place if you want one—_our_ place—and a wedding and a baby and, if we need to, for a change at work. Not all today, but a long-term plan for the next year or two?"

She nods, still deep in thought. "We don't really…" she trails off, hesitant to push too far, even with as deep as this conversation has gotten. "We don't really talk about the future, not beyond next month or the next vacation. It's… hard to know what to expect."

He tightens his arms around her, realizing not for the first time just how bad their communication skills are sometimes. They said "all in," but they've never really talked about what that meant, or about whether they meant the same thing by it.

"What you should expect," he tells her, "is that one day soon, I'm going to bring you back, right here, and I'm going to have a ring in my pocket, and I'm going to expect you to be ready to give me an actual answer to one particular question. And then I'm going to spend the rest of my life with you, whatever that looks like: whether we get six years or sixty, no babies or ten, desk job or field job."

She chokes out a watery, overwhelmed laugh.

"Not ten," she says, "maybe three. And sixty years. Definitely not six."

He chuckles and nestles his face in her hair. "Okay. Sixty years and three babies. Sounds good to me."

As the last of the day's tension leaves her and she settles fully into his arms, he realizes how very true his words are. A future. A real future that they're moving toward. Three babies and sixty years or so together. Family and stability and forever. They are almost foreign concepts to his world-weary brain, but welcome ones. Shifting to wrap her more tightly in his arms, he breathes a sigh of contentment at this beginning of the future he was never sure that he would get.

"That sounds really good to me."


End file.
